Baldur wasn't in any shape to discuss the matter. I could see why he wanted to get it over with. Under the body-dyeing job, he was pale. I insisted he lie down on the single couch. He did and was out in less than a unit.
The room could have been anywhere on a dozen planets. Just a synthetic-veneered room with a couch, a table, a chair, and a separate room with funny-looking facilities for hygiene.
I sat down in the chair for a while, hoping Baldur would wake up, but he just kept snoring away.
I stood up. Somehow the straight-backed chair didn't feel right. I studied it, but couldn't figure out why.
I checked the lock and bar on the doorway. The security equipment was dusty. Baldur rolled over, stopped snoring, and stayed asleep.
I'd had it. The mission's first step was to get some stellars, a pile of the local currency, in order to buy the generator.
Baldur hadn't said, but there was some reason why we couldn't or shouldn't steal the equipment outright. I accepted that, and checked my outfit over carefully.
I made my first break-out into a quiet corner of the Palace of Technology and popped out when no one was looking. As I began to stroll through those endless halls, I put a few pieces together.
Item: Only the biggest and toughest men walked alone.
Item: Women could and did walk unescorted.
Item: The smallest of the male Hunters were taller than me. Most were at least Baldur's size.
Item: Stellars were carried in sealed belt pouches like mine, attached with the same synthetic as the bodymesh.
Not much chance to liberate the coinage of the realm through cut-pursing.
A pair of young Hunters came out of a metal-mirrored emporium, their eyes swinging across the hall. The flowing script above the door they left proclaimed the store as "The Reflection of the Honorable Pursuit." A smoother translation would have been "War Reflects Honor."
The two Hunters didn't seem much older than me. They walked quickly. I moved aside, recalling Baldur's recommendations to avoid trouble.
They moved in the same line.
I started to avoid them again, then saw the pattern. If I kept clear of them, I'd be called for cowardice or its socially unacceptable equivalent. If I didn't, one or the other would brush me and claim I had insulted his honor by not recognizing his passage.
The corridor was wide, well-lighted, moderately traveled. The Faffnirians could smell a fight. People were turning in anticipation before the two bully boys started their final approach. Unless my neck was really at stake, sliding undertime with a crowd watching wasn't the best idea. All we needed was an entire high-tech culture looking for a stranger who disappeared in full view. Baldur, not to mention Heimdall, would have my hide.
If I'd been Heimdall, or Freyda, or even Baldur, I might have been able to plan a graceful way out. But I wasn't. I just kept marching straight ahead until the thinner one, and both were whipcord lean, like a Hunter of Faffnir should be, brushed my shoulder.
"Honored young Hunter, I do believe you have conducted your passage with less than the requisite discretion," intoned the thin one. The elaborate phraseology somehow underscored the deadliness of the game.
"Honored old Hunter, I do believe you have contrived a lack of clearance in your own passage merely to reaffirm your past glories." I responded. Better to be hung for an eagle than a dove.
His eyes widened slightly. His companion smirked, I thought.
"I regret," he retorted, "your passage from this veil will provide such an opportunity, for the Hunters need young hounds of spirit."
The "corner" arena was not far. Too close. After the first flush, I'd been tempted to disappear and try to reason with Baldur and company, but the thought of all the high-tech goodies of Sinopol being brought to bear on Baldur and me dissuaded me, as did the thought that Heimdall just might have recommended a tour on Hell for calling attention to the Guard.
No. Better I fought out of it—if I could. I could always dive at the last minute before the lean Hunter tried to cut my throat—I hoped.
He folded his cloak and moved into the circle etched on the stone glass pavement. All the pavements in the Palace of Technology pulsed with a faint light, but the "arenas" glowed reddish while the corridor floors glowed faint yellow.
I folded my own cloak, studying him as I did.
The knife would be more of a hindrance than help. I decided to throw it as soon as convenient.
"I favor the one with the spotted face."
I scanned the tanned smooth faces around the circle before I understood the voice meant me. Damn! My freckles hadn't been covered totally by the cosmetic job. The two bullies had immediately gone for the difference, just like Baldur had said they would.
"He's smaller."
"But to reach his age with such blotches ... "
"At three-to-two."
The companion Hunter stepped into the middle of the circle and began a spiel.
"Is there no other way for the two honorable individuals to reconcile their differences?"
"I would accept only a profound apology, and that with difficulty," replied the one I would have to kill or dive from. That was right. No honorable blood-letting, scratch-on-the-shoulder, old-chap stuff. One victor, and one body, would result.
"An apology will not suffice, not for one who provokes for empty reason," I snapped, not thinking.
That didn't sit well with the crowd. The mutter that went around the circle turned opinion against me. These people expected pointless duels.
I was experiencing cultural shock. I was not standing in a blood-stained arena, on sand baked by a sun burning overhead, with a blood-thirsty crowd jeering and cheering.
No, I was waiting in a wide, cool, and spacious corridor with the scent of trilia flowers, or something similar, wafting around me, with well-cloaked weapons shoppers stopping for a casual look, as if it were the most common sight in the world to see two young men getting ready to kill each other.
Maybe it was in High Sinopol in the Five Thousandth Century of Glory, but as a young, time-diving Temporal Guard from Query, I had a few reservations about the matter.
All too soon the formalities were over, and the Hunter was circling in on me. At first, I counter-circled, trying to ignore the running comments from the bystanders. I felt slippery under the mesh armor.
"See ... the mongrel backs off."
"Perhaps he is an imposter."
I couldn't help a shudder at the last. Imposters were dispatched beyond the veil on the spot—if discovered. Shuddering was a luxury, and almost my last one at that. Seeing the distraction, the Hunter came in quickly, light on his feet and perfectly balanced. His knife was like silver fire.
Somehow I avoided it and circled back.
"The young dog has speed. Most would have been gutted on the spot."
"If he is so quick, why does he let the other control the circle?"
Tactics were becoming clearer as we circled. Given the bodymesh armor, slashing was virtually impossible. Any successful use of the knife would have to involve a clean and incapacitating thrust.
Now, critical jeers came from the crowd, and not all were aimed at me.
"Can't you hunt down a dog, proud Hunter?"
Sooner or later, he'd get careless with my lack of offense, I hoped.
Sooner it was. Perhaps enraged by the crowd, perhaps thinking me an imposter, he came in with his knife too high. I threw my own blade at his face, and half-ducked, half-slid, blurring almost into the undertime, right around his arm. I snapped his knife wrist with the moves Sammis had drilled into me so many times and crushed his throat with an elbow thrust.
For a moment, I guessed I must have looked at the body stupidly.
"Have you ever seen a Hunter that fast?"
"So fast ... "
"The knife was a decoy ... "
The murmurs buzzed around the circle. The bets were paid, and the bully boy remaining, pale under his dark complexion, approached.
<
br /> "Honored young Hunter, I apologize and regret any inconvenience you may have been caused."
I nodded curtly, choking down the nausea that was climbing up my throat.
Under the customs, I got the dead Hunter's weapons and his coin purse. The rest went to his clan or wife.
"I would be honored, Hunter of Honor," I managed, after receiving the dead man's knife, weapons belt, and purse, "if you would convey my understanding of the honor and bravery of such an esteemed Hunter to those who would be most concerned."
The ritual saved me. I wasn't sure I could have said anything original. The sanitary disposal flitter appeared before I had even crossed the red pavement back into the yellow corridor.
A few older Hunters were standing at a distance and speculating. I took the path toward the nearest narrow corridor, and the instant I was alone, slid undertime and straight for Baldur's room.
I made it to the funny-looking hygiene facilities and thoroughly lost the contents of my stomach.
Two blows, delivered as taught, and a young man was dead on glowing red stone glass. Everyone had smiled, especially the older merchant-type who had bet on me.
I recalled looking up from the crumpled body on the pavement to see him chuckling and collecting from a dour Hunter. What had triggered the nausea I didn't know.
Had it been the winning smile of the young lady after my glorious victory? Or the laughter? Or the realization that I had used techniques my opponent had no idea were possible? I'd cheated. Cheated him of his life, and no matter how I rationalized it, my own failure to avoid the confrontation played a big part in his death.
Baldur was standing at the door to the facilities as I washed up.
He understood, all right.
He nodded at the weapons belt and purse I'd dropped in the middle of the floor.
"Just like you, Loki. Had to snoop around and get in over your head."
"How could they? How could I?" I hadn't had all that much choice, but still ... "I kept thinking that you or Heimdall could have avoided it. But me, no, I had to get into a situation where either everyone in Sinopol would be looking for me or where I had to kill someone."
I sat down because I realized I was shaking.
Baldur seated himself on the other end of the couch and leaned back against the wall.
"You know, Loki, you're probably the first Guard in centuries, besides Sammis maybe, who's killed someone bare-handed. I assume you used hand-to-hand."
I mumbled an affirmative, and he went on.
"Most of the Hunters of Faffnir retire after a single tour or die in some sort of combat. Don't put too much guilt on yourself. You seem to show some appreciation of life."
I was afraid Baldur might start preaching again. The feeling must have showed. He laughed.
"No, young killer, no sermons. One point. You killed one man, who possibly deserved it, and you feel the impact. Freyda, Eranas, Martel make decisions which kill, or leave unborn, millions. Odinthor, for all his heroics, never killed anyone face-to-face with bare hands. He just stood back and roasted them. Think about it."
I didn't want to think about it.
I opened the purse. Surprisingly, it was stuffed with stellar notes. Surprising, because I had not thought such a young Hunter would have carried so much. I handed them to Baldur.
"That's enough for us to go into phase two."
Phase two was gambling. Simple when I thought about it, and another reason why Baldur needed a good diver with him.
Casino-style parlors were scattered throughout Sinopol. We settled on one, Rafel's Bazaar of Chance, large enough so substantial winnings were possible and not overly conspicuous, plain enough that minor breaches of etiquette wouldn't be picked up.
My part started there. I jumped forward and recorded the payoff numbers on a chance gadget, logged them against the local objective time. Basically, the gadget was a gilded random-number generator, the kind that I could have gimmicked. It was honest.
"Of course, it's honest," pointed out Baldur when I re-turned back-time with the information. "Under a duel-based society, how long would a crooked operator last—unless he were the best fighter? Even then someone would eventually kill him."
Baldur had a point.
Since I couldn't occupy the same space-time twice, after I'd given Baldur the information, I jumped ahead over my time in Rafel's and waited for Baldur on the corner outside. Out of habit, I left myself wide-unit margins on both sides.
Seemed like forever before Baldur lumbered out of the casino, blue-black hair hanging over his eyebrows, but my enthusiasm for lone exploring was less than before.
He didn't say anything, just pushed on. We took a mobile slideway toward the Palace of Technology, drifting through the early evening like quiet ghosts among the laughing Faffnirians.
Two things struck me. Sinopol was clean. Even the term immaculate could have been applied accurately. Second, establishments seemed to be open around the clock.
Like all imperial cities, Sinopol reeked of money, reeked of power—from the fountains that bent light around falling water which twisted in midair, to the men and ladies of leisure who paraded the streets flanked with bodyguards dressed in matched golden mesh armor and little else, to the clean air scented with trilia flowers, and overlaid with the impression of absolute bodily cleanliness.
In a moment when no one was close, I asked, "How can a society with such person-to-person dueling run an Empire that spans an entire cluster?"
"How would you keep a society lean and able to function over five thousand centuries?" he asked back.
High Sinopol contained more people than all of Query, it seemed, and probably had a hundred times the creative spark. For all the wealth and technology applied to the streets and corridors of the city, for all the fantastic decorations, I saw nothing of the overelegant, nothing of the decadent, of the Sertian. Not exactly austere was Sinopol, but not ostentatious either.
In the middle of a narrow corridor in the Palace of Technology, Baldur stopped abruptly. The script over the slit door stated "The Power Place."
Baldur faced me.
"Remember, nothing is perfectly safe. Once I verify that the generator is complete, be ready to grab it and dive, if you have to. Remember the generator. The generator is what counts, not me."
He sounded so damned gloomy.
"You're what counts," I responded. "Query can always get another generator."
"No we can't. This is a special order, and for some reason, none of these battle generators appear at any time later than this, and this is as far back as I can dive."
He made it sound like the last chance, like the Tribunes were serious about it. Just for one suitcase-sized fusion generator.
What a Hell of a mess. Only one man in the Guard able to identify and find the need, and only one place in reachable time where it could be found, and only a trainee with enough diving strength to cart it back.
The slit door to the generator shop remained sealed until Baldur placed a black disc in the slot. He shoved me inside before the knife edges of the portal snapped shut behind us.
We stood in a bare room with a number of weapons nozzles pointed at us. The walls shimmered metallic blue, devoid of features beside the weaponry and five closed portals.
"Baldra, Hunter of the Outer Reaches, returns for what he has ordered, Honored Craftsman." Baldur practically groveled before the blank wall screen. I groveled too.
Energy fields crackled around the room, so much power concentrated that it probably bent the undertime. I could have made it out through the undertime before being fried—maybe—but there was no way Baldur could have.
The flow of energy waned, and another portal opened into a small showroom. Again no one was present in the room, but a blocky object, half-man-sized and covered with shimmering black cloth, rested on a table. Next to it was an open case with an attached shoulder harness.
"You may enter, Baldra of the Outer Reaches. With your friend."
Baldur stepped forward. I kept a pace or two behind him.
As the situation developed, I began to see why we couldn't have stolen the generator. I could have lifted it clear, but I wouldn't have had the faintest idea of what to look for. Baldur couldn't time-carry it, for all his superior physical strength.
What a tenuous web the power of the Guard rested on—a generator from Sinopol, a copier from Weindre, a food-synthesizer stolen from who knew where, and the Guard always reaching, always searching out the gadgets necessary to keep Query functioning.
Baldur made a quizzical gesture as he lifted the cloth that glittered with a light of its own.
I caught a glimpse of what was under the black cloth. It wasn't any fusion generator. The unseen observer reacted. The energy fields around us began to build.
I grabbed Baldur by the arm and slid undertime, diving forward.
I brought us out into real time near dawn in Baldur's room.
"That wasn't the generator, was it?"
"No. I don't understand what went wrong."
I did. Since it might have been my fault, I avoided the question.
"Baldur," I began hesitantly, "I may be able to salvage this. I may not, but I have an idea. I'll be back in a few units."
I slid out of there undertime before he could protest. If I were right, the actual generator had been on the table under the cloth until a few units before we arrived.
My recovery was going to be tricky because I had a limited window to work with—basically the time I'd skipped over while Baldur had been gaming. I'd left the gaps there more out of habit than anything.
Hopefully, the operator/craftsman at The Power Place had set up the real generator before we'd won the stake at Rafel's. If not, I'd have to try another approach.
I lucked out. From the undertime, I could tell that something had been set out. But I didn't break-out—not then.
I needed a replacement. Searching fore-time a couple of days, after about thirty units subjective, I found a chunk of a light synthetic sculpture roughly the same size as the generator. It was piled in the back of what I judged to be a warehouse. No one was likely to miss it immediately.
Toting the synthetic contraption back-time to The Power Place, I located my time window and stored the sculpture nearby in a closet even further back-time.
The Fires of Paratime Page 4
