The Fires of Paratime

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  I'd almost had enough. Now Sammis was insinuating that his partner Wryan was Dr. Wryan Relorn and that she had sailed to the rescue of Query by forming the Temporal Guard, right? Sammis and Wryan were good Guards, and maybe they'd been around since forever, but nothing matched. I must have muttered my objections half-aloud without realizing that I had.

  "No. That came later," said Wryan. "Try to understand, Loki. Millions of people lived within kilos of where we sit. All they knew was that the more the government tried, the worse it got. Each new attempt to fight the Frost Giants, even to discover what they were, resulted in more of Query being frozen."

  "So what happened?"

  "Everything collapsed. The King was torn apart in the Square, right where the Tower now stands. People can stand anything but uncertainty, and everything was uncer­tain." Her voice grew even more intense. "Can you imagine living in a city with millions of people, none of them able to dive or slide, not knowing if there would be food for your next meal, or whether you would be frozen solid in the next instant? Knowing that whatever the government did, it didn't matter? Believing that the time-divers could save you, but that they wouldn't, and that it was all the government's fault?"

  "People just don't do that!" I protested.

  They both just stared at me, and I began to feel how old they really were. For that instant, the masks of youth that covered the depths of their eyes slipped, and I saw another kind of Hell.

  "Just say they did," I temporized. "What happened next?"

  The people left in the city of Inequital stormed the Time Labs and the family housing of the divers. Most of the divers escaped, but their families did not.

  Mass diving disrupts the web of time and can be detected, and the Frost Giants slid in where the remaining divers had fled. Most of Inequital was frozen and pulverized.

  After the riots, the famines, the diseases, and the Giants, perhaps two hundred time-divers and 100 million Queryans were left. It was too big to visualize. Within a space of a few years, the population dropped from a billion to 100 million. Nine-tenths gone.

  A diver named Augurt Odin Thor came to Dr. Relorn and suggested building a community of divers, supplied with the remnants of the high mid-tech wreckage, and using the divers to raid the rest of the Galaxy to put Query back on its feet again.

  With chaos reigning, the alternatives seemed worse.

  The diver who located the most promising planets to steal from was called Sammis Olon. After the first divers' camp had been built below Mount Persnol, the youth had appeared from nowhere while Dr. Relorn and Odin Thor were talking.

  The three had worked as a team. Odin Thor had recruited divers. Dr. Relorn had supervised the project and organized the technology. Sammis Olon kept scouting. The disappear­ance of the Frost Giants, though no one knew then that was what they were, had allowed the situation to stabilize—

  "Disappearance?" I interrupted.

  "For a while," said Sammis. "Now do you want to hear it or not? It's only what might have happened."

  I shut up and listened some more. The shadows crossing the mists from the Falls were getting longer, but my firejuice was still nearly untouched.

  With the disappearance of the Giants and the influx, of new talent; more organization of the divers was not only possible, but necessary. Since Odin Thor had been a Naval Marine, he suggested a military organization called the Temporal Guard.

  Dr. Relorn vetoed the idea, but not the name, and sug­gested a looser organization, roughly communal. Odin Thor saw he was in the minority and capitulated.

  During the short transition period of around fifteen years, the old central city of Inequital was razed, and the Tower of the Guard, later called the Tower of Immortals, was started with the new knowledge of time-warping and the construction techniques that remained from the last of the Queryan high technology.

  I still wanted to know how the legend of the Twilight/Frost Giant Wars got started.

  As the rebuilding of Query along the line of self-suffi­cient individual communities progressed, it was becoming apparent that many Queryans were not aging and either they or their children or both had the time-diving ability.

  "Remember, Loki, there was a time when we were not Immortal. Remember that when you become a god," Wryan said.

  Sammis glared at her before going on.

  Far-roving divers under the direction of Sammis Olon kept running across traces of the Frost Giants. Finally, an isolated Frost Giant popped up on the edge of the new city of Quest and froze one family.

  Odin Thor seized the opportunity to rally the divers into a crusade against the Frost Giants, with him in charge, naturally, and with the divers behind him, offered a nom­inal split in the leadership to Sammis Olon and Dr. Wryan Relorn.

  With a fait accompli staring them in the face, with the anger of divers who had lost one family to the Giants, the doctor and the young scout capitulated.

  Finding the Giants was the easy part. In the undertime, they left a trail vibrating with energy. The difficulty lay in figuring out what to do once Odin Thor's Guards found the individual Giants. Past experience indicated that no known energy weapon short of a thermonuclear warhead or a dreadnought class laser was effective.

  Sammis and his scouts combed the high-tech cultures of the Galaxy as far back and forward as they could reach, bringing back weapons and weapon-making machinery.

  In the end, with all the grubby persistence that the Guard personified, Sammis Olon himself found the device—nothing more than a glorified sun-tunnel with special circuitry.

  I looked at the two. It was almost evening, and the shadows were so long they were beginning to merge into twilight.

  "It doesn't end there, does it?"

  "No, unhappily," said Wryan.

  Wryan condensed the story of what followed into units. "By tossing a sun-tunnel linked to a sun into the proximity of a Frost Giant, with an alternation between the sun and the near absolute zero of deep space, an energy resonance was created which effectively fragmented the Frost Giant. Odin Thor was overjoyed, equipped his best Guards with the units, and they all went hunting.

  "How many Giants they got before the Frost Giants realized a hunt was on, I don't know. But the remaining Giants knew where the hunters originated, and all de­scended on Query.

  "The western continent was the heavily populated one, even after the riots and the rest. The Giants froze it solid from sea to sea. The Guard baked and blistered it into a cinder with the counterattack. Another eighty million perished.

  "I suppose they thought we were ants, and they'd stirred the anthill. I don't know. Odin Thor and his crew drove them off, and when the Giants dove clear, those that were left, the Guard turned the Giants' home planets into slag with stolen planet-busters and chased the adults. Chased them to the end of the galaxy and back for a hundred years, picking them off one by one, even while the re­foresting and the rebuilding of the planet Query was begun by the Guards who stayed behind.

  "And when Odin Thor returned from his mindless geno­cide, Dr. Relorn and Sammis Olon were ready for him."

  "Ready? Mindless genocide?" I didn't understand.

  "Genocide," returned Wryan. "Odin Thor never tried to communicate, not even with the children, who were no threat. He destroyed them all, four planets' worth."

  "So what did the doctor and the diver do?" I asked in spite of myself.

  "Why," answered Sammis, "they made Odin Thor the great hero of the Temporal Guard, and the three of them resigned to pave the way for three elected Tribunes to carry on the work of planetary reconstruction." He stopped to clear his throat. "Remember, this is only one way it could have happened. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't."

  Something clicked.

  They both got up abruptly. "Stay as long as you like, Loki. Don't be late tomorrow. You need more work with the knife."

  I scarcely felt them leave as thoughts swirled through my mind.

  No glorious Twilight/Frost Giant Wars? The cataclysm that struck Q
uery brought on by our own stupidity? Why would they tell me such a fantastic tale? Why on Query would they?

  I watched the stars above the mist for a while, listened to the roar of the falling water, and tried to digest it all.

  What kept coming back was the question of motive. If it weren't true, why had they told me? And how could two people tell a story like that, as if they'd lived it, if they hadn't?

  I toyed with the long-dry and empty beaker that had held too much firejuice for my own good, attempting to puzzle it out. The story was true or it wasn't.

  At some point, I gave up and slid back to the Aerie.

  Even there, I couldn't sleep, tired as I was. Gazing down into the deep valleys, knowing what caused the fused and splintered canyon walls, I asked myself about the revenge taken on the Frost Giants by Odinthor. What had it cost him? Did revenge always turn on the revenger?

  I was different. That was how I answered myself. No thoughtless pursuer like Odinthor, at least, not after my taste of Hell. No, I was different, and I would have my revenge on Heimdall.

  Would that be enough?

  Was revenge on Heimdall really what I wanted?

  With the questions piling up in the early morning hours, I drifted into an uneasy sleep.

  XII

  A long morning, one that stretched out under the high ceilings of the Tower as if it would never end—that was what the day promised.

  Most technical peoples think that time passes at a uni­form rate. It doesn't. Any good time-diver knew that. A chronometer will measure intervals precisely, but not the passage of time.

  Scientists explain the variance, if they try at all, by cit­ing biological eccentricities, anything but the real answer, which is that time just doesn't pass at a uniform rate. In most places, it doesn't vary much, it's true, but time is not an interval.

  What is it? It's time. Simple answer, but the most accurate.

  On that morning when the time dragged out, I left my work space to find Baldur.

  Baldur wasn't in his space. One look, and I knew he wouldn't be back.

  Baldur never left loose ends, and his old-fashioned writ­ing platform was bare. Only a few standard manuals re­mained in the shelves by his stool.

  I tiptoed over to the writing platform and opened the single drawer. Empty. The whole space was empty.

  I debated trying to track him down before letting the Tribunes know, but decided against it. Better to keep play­ing it safe and not give Heimdall and company any free shots.

  I rushed up the ramps to the Tribunes' chambers and asked for Freyda or Eranas.

  I was tapping my feet by the time Eranas appeared.

  "Baldur's left. Permanently."

  "How do you know?"

  I told him about the tidy way in which all the loose ends were tied up, about how that would square with Baldur.

  "I can't say I'm surprised, Loki," Eranas mused. "Thank you."

  He turned to go.

  "Aren't you going to do anything? Locate him?"

  "For what? As a Counselor, he can leave any time he wants to. And how could I compel Baldur to do anything? Should I?" He smiled at me. "If you found Baldur, what would you say?"

  Eranas walked back into his chambers, leaving me there open-mouthed.

  After thinking a unit, I crossed the Tower and walked into Personnel to tell Gilmesh.

  "Figures," he growled. "On your way back to Main­tenance, take this."

  He thrust a dented wrist-gauntlet at me. "It's Lorren's. Damned fool left it on during hand-to-hand with Sammis."

  Lorren was Gilmesh's latest addition, a young blond trainee with an insipid smile. I couldn't help but smile at the thought of what Sammis could do to a trainee's ar­rogance.

  The corridors of the Tower were quiet in the morning. I waved at Loragerd as I passed the Linguistics Center, but she didn't look up.

  Back in my own work space in Maintenance, I dumped the wrist-gauntlet on the bench, sat down on the high stool I liked.

  Baldur was gone. That was it, and whether Eranas or Freyda or Heimdall cared, I had to find out why.

  To locate Baldur, or see if I could, I needed his assign­ments file and a locator check. The question was how to get either. Gilmesh ran Personnel and didn't seem in­terested. He'd agree with Eranas. On the other hand, Eranas wasn't going around announcing Baldur's disap­pearance. So maybe I could play it dumb. Once again, I might be risking a bit, but safer to play dumb aboveboard than sneaky and get caught.

  I needed an entree, so to speak. I got to work on Lor­ren's gauntlet. Took a few units to put it back in shape, principally because I replaced the microcircuitry lock, stock, and barrel. Wasteful, but quick. Later I'd have to break down the damaged modules which I'd set aside and fix them. I didn't care much for total black-boxing as a standard repair technique, but it did come in handy when I was in a hurry.

  Gilmesh was a creature of habit, and one of his habits was sipping cuerl at midmorning with Frey and Heimdall.

  With the gauntlet in hand, I trotted up the ramps to Per­sonnel and loitered around the bend in the corridor until I heard the quick clump of boots heading toward the small lounge where the Senior Guards often took a break.

  Time to present Lorren with his gauntlet.

  He was sitting at the small console in the back corner, with his blond hair hanging over his heavy brows and that insipid smile planted firmly and unwaveringly on his face.

  "Here's your gauntlet," I announced.

  Lorren nodded, without even opening his mouth.

  "I need to run down Baldur's whereabouts. Can you run out an update on his past assignments?"

  "Need Gilmesh's approval."

  "Look. Baldur is my supervisor. If he's upset at my run­ning him down, he'll take care of me. You don't have to worry about it."

  Lorren shook his head.

  I picked the gauntlet up from his console.

  The smile disappeared, to be replaced with a half-pout. "What are you doing?"

  "If you don't want to cooperate, fine. As a full Guard, I can require any trainee to fix his own equipment."

  "But it's fixed," protested Lorren sulkily.

  "I black-boxed it, as a favor."

  We stood there. Lorren thought about it. Gilmesh cer­tainly wouldn't let him off from his duties to fix the re­sult of his own carelessness. He'd have to come down to Maintenance in his free time.

  "All right, if you're going to be that way about it."

  He punched a series of commands on the console. I held on to the gauntlet. When he handed me both the print-out and the tape, more than a few units later, I let go of the gauntlet.

  I left, hoping I didn't run into Gilmesh on the way out.

  In a corner farther down and around the corner, I took a look at the print-out. The earliest dive entry date was over two hundred centuries back—real time. I hadn't thought Baldur had been with the Guard twenty thousand years, but I supposed it wasn't all that surprising.

  Frey wasn't around when I marched through the arch­way into Locator. I hadn't planned it that way, just hap­pened. Ferrin was doing most of the work anyway.

  Without any doubt, Ferrin was the worst diver in mem­ory to have passed the Test, but he more than redeemed himself in the running of the locator system.

  Ferrin was the one who rearranged the rotation system for all trainees, Guards, and Senior Guards by figuring the actual diving abilities into the schedule. That way, there was always a strong time-diver on locator duty.

  "Ferrin, can you run a locator cross-check for me? Baldur went off without explaining some heavy Maintenance scheduling and, frankly, I need some of his tech­nical expertise."

  Ferrin's eyebrows lifted.

  "Loki, since I am a literal-minded administrator, and since you undoubtedly have a worthwhile purpose, far be­yond my meager powers of comprehension, I will indeed facilitate your search."

  I restrained a smile. A diver Ferrin might not be, but he knew I was skirting legality. Ferrin, perha
ps more than anyone I knew, could smell a fish. But he knew, and I mean knew, what would hurt the Guard and what wouldn't.

  He slipped off the stool, took the tape data-bloc and eased it into his tracer console.

  "This is totally unnecessary, and that's one of the rea­sons I'm happy to do it."

  I couldn't believe that. Baldur disappearing and a tracer unnecessary?

  "I'm a snoop, Loki. Surely you remember that. That's why I can keep this place going—because I know more than I'm supposed to. News does have a way of spreading, you know."

  He turned back to the tracer screen. "You take a look."

  I looked.

  The console had printed in its stylized script, "No pres­ent trace. Individual does not register outside previous locales."

  Baldur couldn't disappear. Not like that. But the con­sole said his back- and fore-time traces existed only in the places his assignment tape said he'd already been. Ergo he'd disappeared. Right?

  "Loki," said Ferrin, "whatever Baldur's done, he deserves to be left alone. If he went to all the trouble of disguising his trace enough that we can't locate him, you can certainly see he doesn't want to be disturbed. And if he were dead, the change in the signal would show."

  "Maybe," I noted, still suspicious.

  "You suspect everyone and everything. You should. But nobody disliked Baldur. Nobody, not even Heimdall."

  What Ferrin said made sense. I didn't want to believe that Baldur, who was so concerned about the future of Quest and Query, would off and take a dusting.

  I left the data-bloc with Ferrin, pocketed the print-out, and headed back to the Maintenance Hall.

  I didn't get much time by myself before the Tribunes arrived—all three of them—Freyda, Eranas, and Kranos.

  After scrambling off the stool, I bowed slightly in wel­come.

  "We have a problem," began Eranas.

  "With Baldur's disappearance, the Guard is left without a Maintenance supervisor with the appropriate knowledge and seniority. While no one doubts your unquestioned ability, to say nothing of your skill as a diver, your im­petuousness and lack of seniority are equally demonstrable. At the same time, no Senior Guard having mechanical talents is available, and it will be a number of years before you will be eligible for Senior Guard status."