The Fires of Paratime

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Next, I wandered around the area undertime until I located the command or control center of The Power Place. Back fore-time I dived until the room was vacant, perhaps several days. When I broke-out, the whole place was a shambles. I fiddled around until I found the light-control levers on a side panel.

  With another dive back to the sculpture and forward to my window, I located the control room, and with a quick flash-through, flicked off the lights for the entire Power Place.

  I slid into the showroom where the generator—I hoped the real generator—was displayed, and lifted the shiny black cloth. It looked real enough. I made the switch and hoisted the real power equipment undertime just as the lights came on.

  The damned fusion generator may have been trunk-sized, but I could barely hang onto it with my arms and hands for the instants of subjective time it took me to struggle back undertime to Baldur's room right after dawn.

  I was staggering as I broke-out, but Baldur picked the generator out of my arms as if it were a toy.

  I collapsed with a question. "Is that it?"

  "That's it."

  I explained how I'd made the switch.

  "You made the switch before we got to The Power Place, but in subjective terms, it was afterward?"

  I nodded.

  Baldur was no dummy.

  "That means that because you made the switch before in real time, you had to rescue me, which meant that you had to make the switch."

  I wanted to get away from the circular logic. Because I'd made the switch, I had to make the switch. Fine.

  "Baldur, I've got to go back and grab that carrying case. I can't possibly hand-carry the generator back to Query without it."

  "Hold it, Loki. You say The Power Place was a shambles after you went fore-time?"

  "Yes. Why?" What difference did it make?

  "We'd better make sure that happens, too." Baldur handed me a silver cube the size of my foot. "Energy reflector. Drop it on the floor as close to our back-time departure point as you can. Diverts energy back to the source. That's an oversimplification, but after it works, you would be able to pick up the carrying case at your leisure."

  I sighed, squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and dived. Managed to get within a few units of the time we'd left the night before, made a flash-through break-out, and dumped the cube.

  I waited for the energy flows to settle and broke-out maybe thirty units before dawn.

  Baldur had understated the impact of his little cube. I doubted a single circuit in the entire Power Place would work.

  Back in the room, Baldur loaded me up with the damned generator.

  "See you later," he remarked as he dived. For a moment, I wondered what he meant. But I recalled a bit of theory that Freyda had mentioned, and it made sense. Baldur had spent less subjective time away from Query than I had. All my doubling back and forth counted, which meant that Baldur would arrive back at the Travel Hall sooner than I would.

  As I vaulted from time-path to time-path back toward Query, I couldn't help wondering about the implications of the time-twists I'd created in Sinopol.

  The reason there weren't any suitcase generators later in Sinopol's time-line was simple. We'd tried to get one when we did because they didn't appear later. Because we'd tried to get one, we'd destroyed the possibility of later generators by destroying The Power Place. Baldur's energy reflecting cube had probably destroyed the inventor/craftsman, and with the secrecy of The Power Place, none of the other Hunter techs tried such a small generator.

  So we had to do what we did because we did what we did.

  I tried to figure out what came first. Had I caused the switch by imagining the energy build-up? Or had I reacted to an actual energy build-up/possible double cross and thus set in motion the entire set of events?

  I gave up attempting a solution. In real terms, it didn't matter.

  By the time I broke-out in the Travel Hall, Baldur had a small cart waiting for the generator. It went straight to the mech section.

  I went back to my rooms and straight to bed.

  VI

  Dealing with Time, diving season after season, and know­ing you could be time-diving objective centuries later has a certain effect.

  No Immortal had ever died from old age or from any disease, bodily malfunction, or infection. The rate of spon­taneous abortions was high.

  All the same, outside of Odinthor, I'd never met a Queryan older than a half-million-plus, not that I knew, anyway, but training kept all of us from exploring past history or anything else to any degree.

  My personal theory was that with the weight of mem­ory, Immortals became more and more preoccupied with their personal pasts until they neglected the present. And accidents killed Immortals as easily as any other race, more easily than some.

  If it hadn't been for the Temporal Guard, the last Queryan could have died millennia ago. The Guard babied Query, and at the same time it toughened and challenged the most able, intoxicated them with power, and cast them down when they used it against the Guard. That was the way I saw it, the way it was.

  The rules were few, strict, and generally unwritten.

  Theft was an automatic sentence to Hell. Had to be. Any Queryan could slide into any place big enough to hold him. A few of the Guard could do better than that. So there was no real way to physically safeguard belong­ings.

  Some compensating mechanisms did exist. My diving equipment, for example, was stored in a chest which was keyed only to my aura. The chest was locked, too heavy for most to carry on a planet-slide, and too small to get inside.

  Our personal possessions were small and few. Living quarters were similar. As a matter of custom, we respected each other's private places, although some of the early histories cited a period of lawlessness after the initial ap­pearance of the time-diving ability.

  All that didn't mean theft didn't exist; it merely limited it because the stakes were high and the rewards few.

  Who wanted to be an Immortal and chained to a rock on Hell with eagles swooping and ripping at your guts, grounded by a temporal restraining field and fed by a bodily sustenance field that would not let you die? That, or worse, was the lot of the convicted thief.

  With the Temporal Guard doubling as the police force, for most Queryans escape was impossible. When or where could a criminal flee? The successful crimes were those that went undetected.

  Only the craziest, or the most desperate, stole. In prac­tice that translated into idealists or ambitious Guards with. abilities good enough to avoid detection.

  In a nutshell, Query could have been described as a form of socialism or maternalistic family, but a relatively af­fluent family. That affluence was reflected in both Guard training and Guard functions.

  With little violence and few property crimes, other Guard functions in the domestic area became more im­portant on Query than in other cultures. As part of field training, we were assigned to functions such as weather observation, local Guard duplicator offices, and to Domes­tic Affairs, with a longer stint in the Locator section. Locator was the people-tracing aspect of the Guard.

  Locator and Domestic Affairs are two functions of the Guard not located within the Tower, not even in the wings. When I thought about it, it made sense. The Tower is out-of-time-phase, and few Queryans can slide or dive into or out of the Tower from points on Query.

  If a child is missing, or another domestic crisis crops up, time can be important. The Tribunes felt that a direct slide into either the Locator or Domestic Affairs sections would speed up the resolution of the problem.

  Basically, in Locator, four or five Guards sit on their stools behind plain black consoles around an open stage, waiting for upset Queryans to appear and pour out their Locator problems—usually a missing child, a childish prank, occasionally a missing parent.

  Two or three of the Guards who sit and wait are trainees. That was how I found myself staring at a blank Locator screen one afternoon.

  What a come-down it was—to
spend the morning in advanced field dive-training, diving into a nowhere between stars and trying to orient yourself enough to dive back to Query without using the homing equipment and then to find yourself propped in front of a blank console, waiting, sometimes for nothing.

  "Guard Loki!" the woman called urgently, breaking into my reveries. She knew my name because it was on the desk nameplate. "My daughter's disappeared. I can't trace her anywhere."

  "Her name?" I asked politely. "Kyra Dierdre."

  "Birth date?"

  "16 Jove 2,115,371 Orange."

  I keyed it all into the console. Then I punched in the seeker controls.

  "Back-time, One Red, South 34-337-45. EPB ... Astarte."

  I fed the coordinates into the microcircuits of my wrist gauntlets and time-dived right from my stool. For a ten-year-old to have gotten that far meant talent, and talent meant trouble.

  The Guard didn't lose many, but it could happen. If the kid broke-out on an airless planet, I'd have to be there for the pickup within unit fractions to prevent physical damage.

  Other things came into play. I'd heard lots of talk about looping time to undo death, but you can't do it. Dead is dead. The metaphysics of it consume pages of theory, but dead is dead.

  Rescuing Kyra was standard. Under the Time Laws I couldn't make physical contact until after break-out, but I swept in behind her on a narrow black time-branch that led to the airless moon called Astarte. I came out right be­hind her, grabbed, and dived straight undertime. She didn't even have time for a breath of vacuum or a chance to see the black ash and the stars spilled like sugar across the sky. Kyra's mother may have been surprised as we popped into being before her, but she didn't show it. True Queryan stoicism—perhaps a touch of mist in the mother's eyes, but no tears, no visible emotion.

  She did reach for the girl.

  I forestalled her. "I'm sorry, madam, but she'll have to be debriefed before she can come home."

  Once more, the stoicism. "When should I come back for her?"

  "Two hundred units."

  All that time, the girl hadn't said a word. They seldom do immediately after an experience like that.

  I slid Kyra and myself to the training center stage. We had to walk through the narrow stone archway. It wasn't in the Tower either, but across the main Square of Quest from it. The room we entered was out-of-time-phase. I let go of Kyra's arm once we were inside.

  She tried to slide. She faded slightly, but that was all she could manage.

  "Sit down." I pointed to a comfortable stool facing the blank wall screen. She sat.

  I triggered the series. Basically, it was similar to the briefing Gilmesh had given me the very first day of my own training, but worded more simply. Most children don't show any time abilities until puberty. They pick up planet-sliding by the time they can walk and talk co­herently, which is why some Queryan homes with small children have inhibitors. The static patterns are enough to stop smaller children—most of them.

  Kyra was caught by the screen. No great surprise, since a hypnotic field was focused on her to intensify the mate­rial. Standard hazard list was the basis—the dangers of suns, airless planets, black holes, blizzards, radiation, etc.

  Simplified, but the Guard's indoctrination series for way­ward children laid it on thick. Designed for the extraor­dinarily headstrong children whose will had outpaced the development of their rational faculties.

  Two hundred and one units later, Kyra and her mother left the Locator section, presumably for home.

  I smiled and sat down on my stool in front of the console. I keyed her name into the records as a likely prospect for the Guard. While she might not pan but, anyone that strong at ten was likely to be one Hell of a diver in another five or ten years.

  My watch tour for that day was about up when Frey marched in and presented himself before my console.

  He wasn't swinging the black light saber, and he was decked out in formal blacks, with his Senior Guard's four-pointed silver star positively glittering. My insignia was the gold and green of a senior trainee. At the end of the year, when I finished with Locator and Domestic Affairs probation, I was eligible for promotion to full Guard status, and I could wear the solid gold star.

  The ranks were really quite few. After you became a Guard, centuries could pass before the next promotion. The Senior Guards wore the four-pointed silver star. Coun­selors wore black stars edged with gold, and the three Tribunes had black stars edged with silver.

  When I looked at the Guards I came in contact with, I wondered who was selected, by whom, and why. Freyda was a Counselor, and likely to be a Tribune whenever Martel stepped down, or so the gossip ran. Baldur was a Counselor, but Gilmesh, who had more service than either and was in charge of Personnel, was only a Senior Guard.

  Frey had been promoted to Senior Guard a few years back and had been assigned to run Locator/Domestic Af­fairs when Wolflen hadn't come back from a scout run to Atlantea.

  Frey was in a hurry. "Report to Domestic Affairs as soon as you're relieved. Need a second stand-by Guard with hand-to-hand skills."

  He was gone. No explanation. No questions about my availability. Just report to Domestic Affairs,

  I wondered if I were getting a reputation as a stand-by muscler as a result of Baldur's report on the Sinopol dive.

  I was curious. I'd only had lectures on Domestic Affairs and wasn't scheduled to do my probationary work there until much later in the year. Why had Frey ordered me as a back-up Guard? For what?

  By the time Ferrin arrived to relieve me at 1050, I was itching to go.

  Ferrin picked it up. He catches everything. Might not have been much of a diver, but if anything were in the wind, his long thin nose and keen ears were the first to find out.

  "Know what's going on in Domestic Affairs?" I asked with a straight face.

  Ferrin smiled, and his smile and too-big teeth lighted his face like a glowbulb.

  "Heard Frey needs muscle. Didn't want to turn to Heim­dall for it. You were selected, shining star."

  I grinned back at him. Even though he was snoopy, and his lank black hair hanging over his forehead and his long nose gave him a vulture-like look, I had to like Ferrin.

  "So why does Frey need me?" I had another question, stupid, but Ferrin could answer it, and I didn't need one of Gilmesh's sarcastic answers. "And why does he run both Locator and Domestic Affairs?"

  "Do honey and soda bread go together?"

  I thought for a minute, then shook my head.

  Ferrin, ready to explain anything, plunged in. "Look, Loki, at what Locator does. Locator tracks people. Now what does Domestic Affairs do? Handles the police func­tions. And how could it handle the police functions with­out being able to track people?"

  It made sense. I hadn't had to track someone wanted by Domestic Affairs, but Loragerd had told me the story of her second watch at Locator, when the Guard's special Domestic Force had gone out with stunners after a man who had tried to storm Martel's house with an ax.

  Using an ax against anyone or his home is bad enough, and it doesn't happen very often, but to lift it against the High Tribune ... the wretch deserved a term in Hell for something like that.

  Only problem was he didn't get it.

  The Domestic Force finally cornered him on a cliff edge under the Bardwalls, right below the Garthorn, but before they could stun him, he'd jumped off, and there was no way to match fall velocities, especially on Query. Besides, who'd want to for a nut like that?

  I'd asked Loragerd if she knew more about the incident, but she didn't, only that the man had yelled something about the "tyranny of time" and screamed he was tired of being a "poor, dumb sheep."

  No trial. The matter was closed.

  "What's so hot that Frey needs me?"

  Ferrin stopped smiling.

  "I have not the glimmer of an idea, nor even the inkling of a conceptual hypothesis. Unfounded rumor would in­dicate that he requires someone with outstanding sliding skills and of a p
hysical nature, someone who is not be­holden totally to Assignments."

  Whenever Ferrin used the double-talk, he meant he couldn't verify what he said, that he was guessing. His guesses were better than most Guards' knowledge. And translated—Frey needed a junior goon who might be ex­pendable, and he wanted to round the goon up without asking Heimdall's help.

  I reported to Domestic Affairs at 1103 and was promptly greeted by Frey, Gilmesh, and a Guard I'd never met.

  "Loki, this is Hightel," noted Frey.

  Hightel was stocky, broader than me, with rock-sandy hair, brown eyes. He seemed ready to burst out of his black jumpsuit. He smiled pleasantly. I decided he was the kind of Guard to be polite to.

  "Greetings," I acknowledged, and bowed slightly. I couldn't resist pushing Frey a bit. "Could you explain what I'm here for?"

  "Fairly simple," began Gilmesh as Frey stood there without uttering a sound. "We have to move a miscreant from detention to the Hall for Trial. Hightel would normal­ly handle the situation, but there is the faint possibility that those sympathetic to the miscreant may attempt to interfere. You are present to insure that no one interferes with Hightel."

  At that, he handed me a stunner, deliberately setting it on "full."

  I didn't understand, but buttoned my lip. None of it made sense. If the miscreant was so dangerous, why drag a trainee, even a senior trainee, in as a second Guard? Frey was all too nervous, and Gilmesh too plausible. I took the stunner.

  Miscreant was the official term for those non-Guard Queryans who violated the Code. This particular miscreant must be something.

  While some detention cells were in the Domestic Affairs building across the Square from the Tower, most cells were in the lower Tower levels. Made sense, because the con­struction of the Tower inhibited sliding and diving. The power was there for the restrainer fields.

  The field's a rather elaborate gadget, and how it worked I'm not certain. They'd been around as long as the Guard had. What they did was to scramble thought enough to prevent time-diving or sliding. Without something like that, it would have been impossible to confine any Queryan.