I trotted down the ramps to the Maintenance Hall, nodding to the few trainees I passed and prepared for anything.
The only surprise was the empty bin by my space and the note Brendan had left.
Not sure we did it as quickly, but decided you didn't need to come back to it all.
B—
I had to smile. Brendan would do fine. Narcissus would do an adequate job, too, if anything happened to Brendan.
If. If I carried through my mad scheme, I needed a few props. Both could be fabricated elsewhere, but I'd needed information from the Archives.
So I went back to Archives and a shielded booth and keyed in my request, asking for a hard copy. "Galactic Sectoral star chart, normal space, centered on Query."
The second query was shorter for the Data Banks to script out. "Field theory ... enabling equations for FTL drive ... with universal math key addendum."
I stopped back in Maintenance to leave a note on Brendan's console, telling him I was under the weather, but that I hoped to be back as soon as possible.
Following that, I marched up the ramps and across the Tower to the Travel Hall, where I picked up my personal equipment chest and slid it and myself back to the Aerie.
My next step was to confuse the issue.
I began pulling the phony locator tags out from their hiding places, time-diving straight from the Aerie, and placing them on planets scattered both fore- and back-time, but making sure I avoided the systems listed on my print-out of possible high-tech cultures.
By objective nightfall at the Aerie, I'd dumped several hundred "Lokis" throughout the Guard's corner of creation. I unloaded the rest into the Lestral Trench.
I tumbled into my furs for some sleep, but sleep didn't come.
In a short-lived culture, decisions had to be made in a hurry. You never would have the time, might never live to see the consequences of a wrong action. On Query it was different. At the back of my mind, the thought kept recurring: you can always wait and see what happens.
The thoughts merged with dreams, but I was up with the dawn and time-diving clear to Sertis before the sun broke with the horizon.
I'd been there dozens of times before on routine procurements, but this was different.
Three or four establishments turned me down cold.
"Copy that on metal? No."
"That's out of my line. Try ... "
Despite the fact that I was no longer tied into the Locator system, I had the feeling that Heimdall's blood-seekers wouldn't have too much trouble tracing me through Sertis, not with the signs I was leaving. Every metal-working shop and jeweler on the planet would have heard about the red-haired fellow with the accent who wanted a screwball map copied on one side of a metal plate with funny squiggles on the other.
All I needed was one basic plate. I could duplicate from that.
After more than a dozen false starts, I found a woman who dealt in exotic metals and engraving and who promised the copy within a ten-day local. I left a substantial deposit and the promise of a more exorbitant payment.
Needless to say, I merely time-dived ahead and picked it up. I studied the result carefully, but as far as I could see, she'd copied both the map and the equations exactly. No doubt that a trained astrogator or astronomer could pick out the starred system without difficulty. The starred system was Query. But however I could have described it, Query's system was clearly emphasized.
I was back in the Tower by nearly normal working time, even so, and had managed to duplicate more than thirty of the plates on a thin eternasteel by midday. Packing them into a light carrying case was no problem.
The thought of leaving caught me. Ferrin or Heimdall would have planned it down to the last unit and realized it sooner. But why skip before I had to? That amounted to leaving a signpost announcing my hostile intentions.
I regeared mentally, tucked the star-plates and case into the big bottom drawer under my work bench, and dragged a repair job into position. A simple one, which gave me a chance to think.
What a circular path I had been treading! First, I had decided to confuse the locator system by duplicating my personal locator tag signal and strewing it all over the Galaxy. Then I had reversed tracks and had Dr. Odd-Affection remove the tag. In the meantime, I was wearing the removed tag on a chain with a miniature power cell while I was on Query to insure that the Tribunes did not know I had removed it.
I had gotten the information necessary to use outside cultural pressure on Query, but I hadn't done anything because I figured it would start a time-war if Heimdall weren't removed. Then I'd temporized by saying to myself that Heimdall would only be replaced by someone like him.
Sooner or later, and probably sooner, I was going to have to make up my mind. What was I going to do? And how?
As I struggled over the questions, and automatically knocked off the gauntlet repair in front of me, Verdis glided in with the warmth of a blizzard and smiled. "I'm glad you're still here." Her smile wasn't genuine because her black eyes weren't smiling with her mouth.
She twisted her body to flip her heavy red hair back over her shoulders.
"So am I, I guess," I answered, smiling a phony smile to match hers.
"Have you heard the rumors?"
"Rumors?"
"Facts, actually," admitted Verdis. "Frey's been charged with 'High Treason.'"
"What?" I was afraid of what was coming next
"The Tribunes placed snoops around the Tower. They have frames of Frey rifling desks and recovering snoops of his own. He swears it's a plot, that he's been framed."
"When did this get out?"
"Last night. Hearing is set for late this afternoon. Heimdall is demanding that Freyda not sit on the Tribunal. It's a mess." With that, her smile became real.
"You're pleased," I noted.
"Not displeased, but I never thought Frey had the brains to think up something like that."
I decided to muddy the waters. "He doesn't. Nor the mechanical talent to handle snoops."
"Sounding awfully certain, Loki."
I shrugged. "I've no great love for Frey, but he's either telling the truth or someone else is in it with him."
Verdis pursed her lips. "Could be, could be. And who might that be?"
"Verdis, I'm scarcely up on intrigue. As you so pointedly reminded me at our last meeting, I bury myself away from reality. You already know the answer. You just want me to answer for you. Count me out, thank you."
She shook her head. "Loki, you amaze me. The biggest scandal in centuries—one of the Guard caught plotting, and you want out." She glared and mimicked my voice. "Count me out. It's getting a bit complicated. Yes, count me out, Verdis."
I chuckled. Her imitation was good. "Young lady, just what do you want me to do? Go up before the Tribunes and make a declaration? 'I have no basis for my statement, honored Tribunes, except I do know Frey is a mechanical idiot and incapable of higher thought. So he either didn't do what you've charged him with or he's someone's dupe.' Is that what you want, Verdis?"
She stamped her foot on the glowstone flooring. "Loki, you're impossible! I don't know whether you practice density or if it comes naturally. If you can think that all up, everyone already has. Who handles almost all the microcircuitry? You do! And Heimdall and his goon squad will be down shortly to take you into protective custody, at least as soon as he takes over Domestic Affairs because Frey has been relieved of duty. And good luck, because you're either the culprit or Heimdall's way of getting out of the mess he's made. I suppose you'll sit here and wait, like always."
She turned and marched toward the ramps.
I figured it would take Heimdall a little longer to act on his conclusion than Verdis, but I wasn't pleased.
I left the repairs stacked around the work table and pulled out the copy of my cultural meddling print-out.
My request had been coded in increasing order of difficulty, that was, which changes could have been made more quickly, followed by those
which would take more time and more time-dives.
The diving was bound to become more difficult than directed by the Data Banks information because I intended to point the finger of Time at the Guard and at Query, which would require additional dives and improvisations to put the blame where it belonged.
Brendan came flying in. "Loki! Get out of here! Heimdall's headed down the ramp with the Strike Force."
"Thanks." I meant it. "Now get out of here before they drag you in as a scapegoat."
Brendan got out.
Fight now or later? My gut said now. Common sense said later. After all the planning and all the information-gathering, I was still getting pushed around, rushed.
I jammed the print-out into my jumpsuit, grabbed the plates from the bottom drawer and slid straight undertime from the Maintenance Hall to the Aerie.
Concealing my ability to do that was secondary at that stage.
Standing in the Aerie, I surveyed my small nest, from the permaglass to the stores of destruction, the power cells, the equipment I had gathered over the seasons.
I had been considering action for years, putting it off, planning and replanting in my dreams, but I was down to a decision point, with Heimdall close behind. I could sneak out into the stars or strike out at what the Guard had become with Heimdall.
Maybe Heimdall was more the Guard than I was, but it mattered little at this point.
I had wondered why he didn't arrange my death when I was unconscious after nearly losing my arm in the shark mission. I concluded it wouldn't have done to have the wounded hero die mysteriously after braving and surmounting the perils of the past, particularly when there was a good chance the sharks would get me anyway if I tried to complete the mission.
Heimdall must have figured he had it both ways. If I didn't return, he was well rid of me. If I refused to go, my image would have been tarnished enough to remove my influence.
I shook myself. The time for dreaming and speculation was past.
As I contemplated the wild scheme I had hatched, I changed from the black Guard jumpsuit into something else, glancing down at the river and the deep canyons from time to time as I did.
With a start, I realized I had changed into a totally red outfit. That fit.
I would challenge the fires of Time, perhaps whatever gods of Time might be, and red was my color. Red for the fires that burned within.
XIX
The name at the top of my list was Altara IV, supposedly the planet where the time-changes would be the easiest to make.
Wrist gauntlets in place, eternasteel tablets in the carrying case slung under my shoulder, I squared myself for the first of the time-dives with which I would wrench Query's history into a different mold.
I slipped into the undertime with scarcely a ripple, hardly aware of the mind-chill.
The back-time for which I was diving contained a turning point. All histories have them, a place where an "almost" culture might have emerged. Given a push at the right times, or a mailed fist on the opposition, the prognosis for events leading to high-tech development was favorable.
On Altara IV a bronze age evolution on the small island continent had been wiped out by the invasion of a barbaric bunch of ax-wielders who outnumbered the lizard people of the island ten to one and who never bothered to settle on the island continent, but continued their wanderings into oblivion.
My first break-out was to locate the barbarian encampment, and after three scans through likely twilights, I found campfires scattered around the sand bars and the twisting land bridge that led over the horizon to the land I had chosen to protect.
With a skip-flick-flick-flick through the undertime, I centered on the narrowest segment of the unstable rock and sand that composed the causeway.
The destruction was simple enough. I tossed the small anti-matter capsule toward the land bridge below and departed undertime. The sand erupted; the fire spewed heavenward; and the waters rushed into the new channel that would block the island continent from the mainland.
And I flamed into view over the camps of the ax-wielders.
And in the twilight the god of fire appeared to his people, and from thence to their enemies. The lightnings were his cloak, and the sparks dropped like the rains of winter, and the enemies of his people knew him not, for the god of fire had long been absent from his place.
The multitudes of the enemy did not bow down, nor did they cover their eyes, nor show any sign of respect.
And the god of fire was angered, and his lightnings, they rained upon the unbelievers, and few were spared.
Their screams spread upon the night and were not heard, for they had not believed. They had seen and had not seen; they had been shown god and did not worship.
The night was as day, and the lightnings struck the land as the hammers of the smith pound upon the forge, and there was heat, and many of the waters bubbled and seethed.
And the people of the island, the chosen ones, kneeled upon hard rocks and marveled, and were amazed. By the hammers of the god were they astounded, and they worshiped, and then, then did the god of fire put aside his lightnings and depart.
With a shiver, I slid undertime along the chill wind of the time-change I had created, riding the creaking surges forward.
A city shimmered with lights, beckoning through the time-tension barrier.
I answered the call and broke-out.
The city section I saw first was squalid even in the night, gas lights throwing shadows across low stone huts.
I skip-slid into the following day and toward the harbor, looking for a warship, certain of finding one.
Not one, but a squadron, a small fleet, powered by some steam-fire system, attested to by the smokestacks. Crude metal plating and gun ports proclaimed they were intended for combat.
The god of time and fire arose from his slumbers, and in the twilight of that evening gathered his thunderbolts that the ships of that king, and the pride of that people, be brought down to the fishes of the sea, and along with the vessels, also the soldiers and sailors who defied the god of time by their blasphemies.
For no harbor was yet safe from the god of fire, and no city escaped his judgment; and his judgment was, and it was that the warships of the sea should be no longer. And raised he his mighty arm and collected the flames of the sun and the lightnings of the storms and once more, as he had in the past, made the night as day, and brighter than the noontime it was as the fires fell from the heavens unto the ships and the waters. And the ships were no more.
The people were sore afraid and remembered the tales of old and the prophecies they had mocked, and they prostrated themselves before their god and prayed for his forgiveness.
Unto them who prayed was their god merciful and upon the black rock by the waters which still seethed gave unto his people his holy tablet, and departed then the god of fire upon the lightnings and the fires.
Where one fleet sailed must have sailed another, if not several, and I began a quick slide search of Altara IV.
In my haste, I was not strictly impartial, searching only for warships of apparently different origin.
And unto the enemies of his people visited also the god of fire and rained upon their vessels also the fires of the sun and the lightnings of the storms. And those vessels also perished.
The change-winds around Altara IV moaned more loudly as history changed into para-history and para-history became history, and as I rode those winds further foretime.
I whisked through local centuries in an instant to break from the undertime into objective time. Differences were evident, with canals, intensive cultivation, and the lines of what might have been quick-transit systems all visible from my commanding view. Those were not what I needed.
I slid undertime and scanned the planet, hunting for the energy concentrations that must have existed. They did.
Three powerplants were ideally spaced, and I girded myself for the next step.
For in their
pride, his people had builded themselves towers to store the fires of the sun and to trap the lightnings of the storms, and to have each do their bidding.
And they said, we are like the god of our fathers, mastering the fires of the sun and the lightnings of the storms, and flying like the eagles.
But the god of fire was displeased, and in the space of an instant hurled down the towers of power, and they were stone and dust.
Yet the people were still proud, and in their pride, dared their god and the heavens, and, behold, crossed the skies faster than eagles, and their craft of the air made the sun stand motionless in its course.
And a craft of the air approached the god of fire even as he had toppled the towers, and flew nigh unto the god and turned not.
The almighty one drew unto himself, and from the thunderbolts of the storm made first a signal; so might all the peoples of the earth know his displeasure, and the red of his fires surpassed the green of the sky.
And those who had forgotten recalled again the tales of their god, and trembled, and were fearful.
Another sign displayed the god, and yet another, for to warn that flier who had dared the heavens after the fashion of his fellows and challenged the god of fire.
At last fled the defiant one, but the lord of fire suffered not that his servant should escape, and he gathered unto him his flames greater than the sun of the noon, and cast down the flier who fled.
Many feared, yet saw not; because the people did fear and did see, but understood not what they saw, the god went to the high place of his peoples where gathered the most mighty, and so cast it down, making the hills like the plains, flat and smooth as finest ice, and in the center of that holy place, left there the last of his holy tablets that his people might read, and reading, might learn, what was to lie before them.
And he was pleased.
Departing in a column of flame, I rode the screaming, wrenching change-winds for para-instants before racing ahead, back to Query, back to my Aerie.
The Fires of Paratime Page 23
