The Lord of the Sands of Time

by Hubbert, Jim

  “Miyo…” A dry whisper. His mouth was stained with blood. “I heard you talking to Cutty. I couldn’t have said it better.”

  “You must rest. Your wounds will heal, yes?”

  “They’re healing now. Just listen to me and stop crying. Look out for your people. Forget your homeland. Home is something you carry with you, in your mind. As long as you survive.” He gripped her hand so hard Miyo almost cried out, but his strength reassured her.

  “I understand. No more talk. You’re one of the wounded now.”

  “Sayaka…”

  “What?” Miyo started. Orville seemed to be staring into some empty place. Then his eyes fell on her again. “Ah, it’s you.”

  Suddenly his face relaxed, as if he were about to break into a smile. His hands went slack. Miyo gripped them tightly, stroking them again and again, as if trying to stroke life into his body. Her knees began to shake.

  “Orville?” She called to him, touched his face. His pale eyes no longer followed her motions. She stroked his face and wept. No matter how tightly she closed her eyes, the tears would not stop. The cheeks of the Messenger were streaked with her tears and those of the men holding him.

  The wind whipped the waves to foam. Some of the soldiers dropped to their knees in the surf, exhausted. The waves of sobbing moved out from Miyo and spread to the rest of the army. The men sobbed as if the world were ending.

  Then something at the core of her being rebelled. She would not die. She inhaled deeply, stifled the heaving in her breast, and shouted across the surf. “Raise the battle flag!” She wiped her eyes fiercely with the sleeve of her tunic and glared at the men. Their faces were shadowed with grief. She took another deep breath and shouted with all her strength:

  “Raise the banner! Himiko’s great war banner! I am not beaten yet!”

  The men looked at her in confusion, as if they had misheard her. She raised her fists and glowered at them with red-rimmed eyes. “Rise up! We go west. The enemy cannot follow us in the surf. We will go to the lands beyond. We will swim the straits to China if we must. But we will survive! Rise up and dry your tears. Forget your homeland. As long as we live, so Yamatai will also live! The races of men will never bow to the mononoké!”

  Gradually the sobbing ebbed. The men slowly moved toward her. They ignored the enemy on the beach behind them eyeing the water’s edge and awaiting their chance. They gathered around her. There was no war banner. The emperor’s gift had been lost in the retreat from Musashino. But one of the soldiers raised a pike with a small flag nailed to it. The flag was torn and dirty. Miyo stepped beneath it and called to her army.

  “Do you swear to follow me and survive, no matter what?” The men sounded their resolve. Miyo shook her head and shouted, “Even if we must swim to China?” The men cheered again with new strength in their voices. Miyo began to walk north through the surf. “Then come with me, if you want to live!” Kan proclaimed his determination and a thousand throats echoed him. Their voices seemed spirited enough to chase the west wind out to sea.

  The sky flashed white. For an instant, the landscape seemed to levitate.

  Miyo looked up, momentarily blind. When her vision returned she doubted her eyes. A giant object, sheathed in armor, floated in the sky. It must have been a full ri or more in length, end to end. A sky ship?

  Before Miyo and the soldiers were able to shake off their amazement, their upturned faces were lit again. From both ends of the ship, needles of blue-white light darted over their heads, sweeping the beach, the ruins of their camp, and the paddy fields. Wherever the needles touched the earth a wall of fire erupted, as if a fissure had opened in a volcano. The line of fire slashed across the hordes of advancing enemy. The enemy were flung end over end or torn apart where they stood. Across the battlefield, a distorted, high-pitched wailing rose to pulsing shrieks, that were suddenly cut off. The enemy was burning.

  A wave of scorching heat struck Miyo. She held the soaked hem of her tunic over her nose and mouth as she silently watched. The needles of light darted out again and again. Each time, a fresh wave of heat and the groaning of the earth reached the Yamatai forces standing in the water. Finally their eyes registered only the dancing of the blue-white light, even against the sea of fire.

  The raking of the needles ceased. As their vision returned, they saw a scene from hell.

  A smoldering wasteland stretched before them. The fields were now smoking pans of melted salt and iron. The bodies of the enemy lay scattered in piles into the far distance, their ruined corpses belching greasy black smoke. The smell was nauseating.

  “It’s coming!” yelled several soldiers at once. They watched in fear as the giant ship descended silently onto the water. Soon a small, leaf-shaped boat emerged from its side and headed toward them. A single figure stood in the prow; Miyo squinted to make him out. The man’s height, build, and relaxed posture were familiar. The little boat pulled up and the man stepped down into the thigh-deep water. Miyo’s voice trembled. “Orville…?”

  “No. My name is Omega. I am a Temporal Army Pathfinder from the twenty-first century.”

  At first she did not believe him. The voice, the face—he was too similar to Orville. But when she looked closer she saw he was different. The jaw was heavier, the hair somewhat lighter than Orville’s. This man was clearly younger.

  Omega surveyed the results of his handiwork, then approached Orville’s body, which the soldiers had laid on the beach. Omega knelt and peered intently into Orville’s blind eyes. A tiny thread of light briefly linked their pupils.

  “Don’t touch him!” Miyo ran up, shaking with anger, and Omega quickly stepped away from the body. He spoke quietly to himself, but those nearby could just hear him:

  “Messenger Original. The legends were true. How did you bear this burden so long?” He looked down at the body and raised his flat left hand to his eyebrow. Something in that strange gesture bespoke a deep respect, and Miyo stepped back.

  Omega turned to her. “Did he leave instructions for handling the body?”

  “For his burial? No,” she answered. “But I won’t let you have him.”

  “Then I leave him with you. Bury him with honor.”

  Miyo hesitated. “Are you the mighty host, the one spoken of in the Laws?”

  “Yes. We came to destroy your tormenters and save this timestream for all eternity.”

  Miyo felt a sudden fury so terrible that everything in her sight went red. “Why now? Why not months ago, or even hours? Then the Messenger would not be dead on this beach. And Takahaya, and so many others!” She stepped toward him, fists clenched. But Omega raised a hand and calmly shook his head.

  “You don’t understand. We could not have come an instant before we did. The moment we arrived marked the moment our timestream came into being. This battle gave birth to it. You gave birth to it. He raised his hand to his brow once more and said in a voice full of reverence, “You must be Queen Himiko.”

  “I am.”

  “The Battle of Suminoé, A.D. 248. Trapped by twenty thousand mononoké, teetering on the edge of defeat, the queen of Yamatai rallies her forces and escapes to the west, where she rebuilds her army. A year later she lures a vast force of mononoké into a narrow valley, where her armies unleash a dammed river—a saltwater estuary—that drowns them all. Later, the Land of Wa flourishes under her rule, and she lays the foundations for the nation of Japan. And this becomes the prior history of a new timestream.” Omega gazed at her with the affection of a child reunited with its mother.

  Miyo returned his gaze and considered his words. Finally she said, “You are my distant descendant.”

  “I am an AI, created by your descendants. No, you are right. I am your descendant. Had you not refused to accept defeat, resistance against the ET would have collapsed on one front after another. On behalf of all humanity and human history, I thank you.” Omega bowed deeply. Then he turned and sprang into the boat.

  “Where are you going?” said Miyo anxiously.


  “West, of course. There is work to do in China. The enemy is on the brink of victory, but that will change.”

  “Will you return to us?”

  “No, and it is better that we do not. We came to eradicate the enemy, not to interfere in any other way with your history. We must do everything to preserve the integrity of this stream, because once the enemy is destroyed, the stream will be complete. That is our mission, no more and no less.”

  “And besides,” he said with a laugh as the boat stirred the water beneath. “I believe you despise any form of meddling. Isn’t that right?”

  “Omega!”

  The boat moved away quickly, was swallowed by the ship. A moment later the great sky ship rose into the air, dipped once, and accelerated out of sight. One instant it was hanging in the sky, the next there was only the echo of a titanic thrumming, like some great chord. After a long moment, it faded as well. There remained only the sound of waves on the beach and the crackling of dying fires. The soldiers stood in small groups, heads bent with weariness or staring in blank astonishment at the smoking field. Instinctively, they began to gather around Miyo.

  “My queen…”

  “What next?”

  “What has happened?”

  “We’ve won,” said Miyo, and exhaled deeply. “Our battle cry summoned the mighty host, just as the Laws foretold. The mononoké will not come again. Our descendants have come to destroy them all.”

  She looked around her. The faces of the men were filled with doubt. Too much fear and suffering had been spun into a spell that would not release them. She needed something to break it. Then she saw the answer, lying on the sand.

  “Let us bury the Messenger. We will build him a great tomb. Gather the bodies of the fallen and bury them together. And let us cry for their sakes, until the tears will flow no more.” At these words, the men seemed to understand that everything was over. They walked slowly out of the water and up the beach.

  “Lady Miyo…” Kan was beside her, his eyes brimming with tears. He spoke so only Miyo could hear. “I wished the Messenger had never come. He took you away from me. But he died so deliverance would be ours.”

  “Enough, Kan. It is over.”

  “How could I ever have doubted him?” He began to cry. His heartbroken keening carried across the beach and was echoed by other voices, first on one side, then the other, till the gray shore seemed shrouded in sorrow.

  Miyo grasped his hand. She felt a tenderness for this boy as he grieved for the Messenger, and she knew their journey together would continue for many years. He was the only one who understood her.

  “I’m glad you’re with me, Kan.” Miyo wiped her misting eyes and stared ahead. She could not afford to cry. It was time for Queen Himiko to begin restoring the Land of Wa, to watch over the tomb and honor the teachings of the Messenger of the Laws.

  CHAPTER 10

  STAGE ΩJAPAN A.D. 2010

  The flagship Secundus Minutius Hora settled quietly into its sea berth at Osaka Space Terminal. Fireworks exploded in the sky and tugs sprayed fountains of water. Pathfinder Omega was on the bridge, but hardly noticed the celebration. He was absorbed in the memories passed to him on that wave-beaten shore. At first he had resisted the idea of serving as the repository for another AI’s memories, but the astonishing history that streamed through his comm link erased any doubts he might have had about his assignment.

  For centuries, historians believed the Messengers were the stuff of ancient legends, but in the eighteenth century they began to reexamine the old tales. Gradually it dawned on them that this strange oral tradition, stretching from Egypt across Africa and unconnected with any indigenous religion, might actually be rooted in historical fact. The stories, known collectively by names like “The Four Hundred Stream Chronicles” and “Saga of the Insect Crusade,” could be interpreted as a metaphor for a temporal war extending far into the past. The oldest surviving versions of the story contained more than three hundred linked chapters. But for reasons unknown, all versions of the tale seemed to end abruptly, and investigators searched without success for the final chapter. Still, the different versions were startlingly similar, even when found in widely separated and otherwise unrelated cultures.In the twentieth century, matters were decided in favor of historical fact when traces of antimatter were discovered deep in Africa’s Victoria Crater. Until then, scientists had assumed the enormous depression was caused by a devastating meteor strike. Now it was clear that some sort of titanic struggle had taken place around 400 A.D.

  Once the technology of time travel was a reality, the AIs dispatched into the past were configured for scholarly investigation as well as armed confrontation. Pathfinder Omega’s ship was the first to come upon the struggle as it was taking place. Immediately, he realized the importance of recovering O’s memories.

  Still, the sheer size of the data partition was beyond anything he had imagined. Here was every detail of O’s existence, beginning with his inception in an alternate timestream, his encounters with the ET in the twenty-second century and beyond, and his desperate struggles across more than four hundred parallel universes. Omega wandered this compendium of memory with stunned admiration. It was like a vast, silent labyrinth abandoned without regret by its builder. The riches of this data trove were beyond price, both for their scientific value and as the record of a hero’s exploits.

  But for Omega, such notions of value paled into insignificance compared to his direct experience of the data itself. He wandered through O’s memories as if they were his own. To know such an entity—no, to inherit such a man—was a truly unexpected gift. And as the war on the ET spread from this secure universe to alternate timestreams, the lessons of Messenger O’s memories were destined to play a decisive role.

  Yet as he merged his mind with the data, Omega was baffled. The emotional traces he had expected to find were strangely absent. There seemed to be no pride in victory, no shame in defeat. Instead, there was a persistent thread, some residue of a thought that had carried O through untold years of striving. Whatever it was, it seemed to have been the raw material of his personality; the stuff of life that had formed the core of his being.

  What is this? Omega had encountered nothing like it. It was a tiny, indefinable void, a mold once filled with something but now the essence of emptiness. The immanence of whatever had dwelt there long ago was palpable but always out of reach, like a phantom beyond the edge of his vision. It was something lost, never to be recovered, yet relentlessly pursued nevertheless.

  Like a frozen caress, the void whispered its loneliness. Omega felt growing astonishment. As the core of O’s self spread through his mind, he felt unaccountably happy, as if loneliness were the single emotion he associated with beauty or joy. It was beauty and joy. He felt a remarkable sense of peace. Was this what had driven Messenger Original for over a hundred millennia? That was something the data could not tell him.

  “Are you crying?” asked the flag officer in surprise. Omega returned to the present with a jolt and touched his face. It was streaked with tears. “No. It’s nothing.”

  “The gangway’s out,” said the officer brightly. “Sounds like quite a celebration.” Omega rose and made his way to the portside hatch. As he stepped, blinking into the sun, onto the head of the long gangway, he understood the twinkle in the officer’s eye. This was no mere celebration. It looked as if half of Japan’s capital was crowded onto the space terminal’s two-hundred acre apron, waving and cheering.

  For the enemy, it was the beginning of the end of their reign of terror over the branching streams of human history. The species would soon reach out across time to wreak an icy vengeance, and that was reason enough for celebration. But this was almost too much.

  Pathfinder Alpha stepped out onto the gangway behind him. “I might have known. The Temporals have to prove their money was well spent. It must have cost a fortune to shut down the port for this.”

  Omega smiled. “Oh, don’t be such a cynic. Thi
s is exactly the way things were destined to be.”

  Alpha flashed a smile of his own, strong white teeth over which black skin stretched. “What happened to you? You’re the original cynic.”

  “Yes. Something has changed,” said Omega. He descended to the apron. The gangway ended in a large semicircle ringed by luminaries from the Ministry for Temporal Administration and the Global Confederation of Nations. Closer to the gangway was a line of young women, each holding a large bouquet of flowers. Just as Omega felt the old frown forming at the sight of all this choreography, one of the women stepped forward. When he saw her, all cynicism vanished again.

  “Welcome home, Pathfinder.” She held her bouquet out with slender arms. Her accent was slightly different from the lilt of standard Osakan. Her hair was jet black, her skin sun-browned. A curious, snake-like tattoo circled her upper arm in a crimson ring. Hanging from a silver chain around her neck was a single curved magatama bead. Omega stared; it looked like the real thing. For an instant he felt oddly disoriented. He couldn’t decide whether he was looking at something ancient and barbaric or starkly contemporary. Then he realized the girl was from a region east of Osaka, where a cone-shaped mountain rose abruptly from the plain and the people carefully preserved some of the ancient forms of dress and speech.

  “Listen,” he said with a strange urgency. “Are you from Makimuku?”

  “What?” The girl looked stunned. “How did you know? I was born there.”

  “And your name?”

  The girl’s eyes widened, and for an instant something flickered deep inside them. She stared at Omega. “Do I know you?” she said finally, a bit awkwardly.

  “I doubt it.”

  “I’m Sayo.”

  “Sayo. That’s a pretty name,” he said. Then something inside him cried out from a place far beyond memory, like a hand stretched out longingly to touch the moon.