by Simon Hawke
The door to the cell opened and a guard looked in. Seeing Darkness, he charged into the cell, his sword swinging in a sharp, descending arc. It passed right through the scientist.
“Get out,” said Darkness. “I’m having a conversation.”
The burly tribesman stared at him, bug-eyed. The other guard came running in and tried to grab Darkness from behind, only to have his arms close around empty air. The two tribesmen stared at each other in astonishment. From behind them Darkness said, “You two are beginning to annoy me. Phoenix, you speak their gibberish. Tell them to get the devil out of here.”
“You’d better leave before you make him angry,” Phoenix said to the guards in Pushtu. They fled, screaming.
“Well, that’s all fine for you,” said Phoenix, “but what do I do when half the Ghazi army comes running in here?”
“That’s of no consequence to me at the moment,” Darkness said.”We need to talk.”
“Of no consequence to you? Now just a—”
“Don’t interrupt. There have been unfortunate developments. Lucas Priest is dead. I homed in on his symbiotracer only to find a corpse. It seems he died saving Winston Churchill’s life. A noble sacrifice, I must admit, Churchill wrote some excellent books. Still, there’s the matter of your agents. I can find no trace of any of them. I must assume they were killed. The most logical explanation is that—”
There was shouting in the corridor outside the cell and the sounds of running feet.
“We’ll never get anywhere with these constant interruptions,” Darkness said. “We’ll have to continue this discussion elsewhere.”
He translated into tachyons and disappeared from sight.
“Darkness! Wait!” shouted Phoenix.
A large group of heavily armed Ghazis burst into the room.
“Darkness, God-damn-you-lousy-son-of-a—“
An arm appeared out of thin air behind Phoenix. It grabbed him by the collar and yanked. Phoenix disappeared. The Ghazis trampled each other trying to get out of the room.
“—bitch!”
“Really?” Darkness said. “I should have left you back there to face those primitives.”
“Holy shit,” said Phoenix.
He looked around. He was in a large, cluttered laboratory with wall-to-wall computer banks and other electronic instruments. Dominant in the room was a huge radio telescope. The domed ceiling made the room an observatory. There was an incredible array of equipment, most of which Phoenix could not identify, and in a bizarre juxtaposition, scientific apparatus stood side by side with exquisite Victorian antiques, bronze sculptures, and oil paintings. Books were everywhere, in shelves upon the walls, stacked on desks and tables, piled on the floor. There were thousands of them.
“Where in hell am I?”
He turned and saw a large bay window. The landscape outside was rocky and desolate. It was also vermilion. He could see nothing but desert and rocks for miles. And he could see three moons.
“Doc?”
He turned around. Darkness looked drained. He walked over to a large reading chair and collapsed into it.
“You can move!”
“Of course I can move, you imbecile.”
“I mean, you can walk like a normal person!”
The scientist made a wry face. “Thank you. I assume you meant that as a compliment. Yes, I can indeed move about like a normal person, as you say, when I am not in transit in my translated state. In other words, I do not violate the Law of Baryon Conservation when I am home.
“Home?” said Phoenix. “You mean … this is it?”
He glanced quickly back at the window, at the three moons in the sky. “Christ, we’re not on earth!”
“Your powers of deduction are truly overwhelming,” Darkness said. “There is a bottle of scotch on that sideboard there. Be so good as to pour me a glass. And help yourself as well.”
The scientist looked exhausted. Phoenix swallowed hard, then moved to comply. “How the hell did you do … whatever the hell it was you did?”
“The scotch, Phoenix, the scotch.”
Phoenix handed him the glass and Darkness tossed it down. “I won’t try to explain how I did it, because I don’t feel like talking for six hours. What I did was to extend my tachyon field for a brief interval and drag you into it. I discovered I could do that, briefly, without altering the molecular structure of objects, but it depletes my energy severely. It’s quite an interesting phenomenon. Didn’t know that I could do it with people.”
“Wait a minute,” Phoenix said. “You mean I’m the first person you ever tried that with?”
“Well, I’ve never had occasion to attempt it with a living being before,” said Darkness. “The principle should be the same … the structure of molecules is, after all … you do feel all right, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. How would I feel if my molecules were out of whack?”
“That could be painful,” Darkness said.
“Very funny. How do I know I haven’t become like you?”
“You could never become like me. But I assume you’re referring to an alteration in your molecular structure. Rest assured, it would take a great deal more than a brief exposure to my energy field to tachyonize your own molecular structure. However, if you find yourself leaving to go somewhere and arriving before you’ve left, I would say you may have some cause for concern.”
“Just where exactly are we?” Phoenix said.
“We are in another galaxy,” said Darkness. “That’s all you need to know.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. However, if you can manage to contain your incredulity, we have some things we need to discuss. Apparently, the situation is a great deal more serious than I thought. With Lucas Priest dead, I have no way of finding the adjustment team. He was the only one of them who had one of my symbiotracers. And since your agents have all disappeared without a trace, I must assume the worst.”
“Drakov had Fox and Sable killed,” said Phoenix. “My cover was blown when he recognized me.”
“Drakov? How does he fit into this?”
“He’s leading the Great Jehad as Sayyid Akbar,” said Phoenix, then quickly brought the scientist up to date on what he had learned. “The only reason he didn’t have me killed was that he wanted to turn me over to the soldiers from the other timeline. Doc, according to Drakov it’s an almost identical alternate universe. I wasn’t able to learn very much about it, but Drakov claims it’s enough like ours that he couldn’t tell the difference at first.”
“Interesting,” said Darkness. “That may explain a great deal. I was wondering why the confluence effect did not manifest itself more profoundly. Perhaps it has and we simply haven’t noticed it.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, think of colors, for example. Imagine a flowing river of red. Now imagine another river that’s yellow. If they flow into one another, you’ll have an orange river. But if both rivers are red to begin with, only of slightly different hues, you might not readily observe a graphic change in color as a result of the confluence. Similarly, given parallel timelines of an almost identical nature, the points of confluence between them might not be readily apparent. Small wonder I haven’t been able to pinpoint them. I’ve been searching for dramatic fluctuations in temporal energy. Wrong method entirely. I should have been looking for anomalous inertial surge, instead. Of course. It seems so obvious, it should have occurred to me before.”
“Doc, you’re losing me again.”
“Yes, well, you’re lost to begin with. But then, I’m not much better. If I had foreseen this possibility, none of this would have happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m the one who invented warp grenades, remember?” said Darkness. He looked down at the floor. “I think I know now how the inventors of the atomic bomb must have felt. It never occurred to me that teleporting such massive amounts of energy through Einstein-Rosen Bridges could in
terfere with the chronophysical alignments of the warps. After all, there were already immeasurable amounts of energy involved, I didn’t see how it could make any difference. The effects must have been exponential.”
“Doc, you mind speaking in English? To tell you the truth, I really don’t give a damn how it happened. It happened and now we’ve got to deal with it somehow. How about concentrating on that?”
“My friend, I’ve been thinking of little else.”
“And?”
“And I haven’t come up with anything. Not even Mensinger would have been able to solve this one. I suspect that’s what drove him over the brink. He realized he had set in motion a chain of events that were bound to escalate out of control sooner or later. The people in the alternate timeline are faced with precisely the same problem, though admittedly that doesn’t help us much.”
“Only they’re trying to do something about it,” Phoenix said.
“Yes, well, they’re obviously concerned about maintaining their temporal integrity,” said Darkness.
“At our expense,” said Phoenix.
“I can hardly blame them,” Darkness said. “Clearly they’re ahead of us in one respect. They’ve managed to pinpoint at least one confluence and use it to cross over into our timeline. If my supposition is correct, and the confluence point can be located by inertial surge…” He snapped his fingers. “Of course! That’s what they’re doing!”
“What?”
“The two timelines are dissimilar enough to cause instability in the temporal flow,” said Darkness, “but the Fate Factor enters in at points of confluence and attempts to compensate, only since the timelines are not dissimilar enough to set up a crosscurrent effect that would manifest itself in discontinuities, the result is a surge in the inertial flow! We have instability due to the proximity of the two timelines, yet a stronger inertial flow at points of confluence. The greater the number of confluence points, the stronger the inertial flow. Eventually this magnified temporal inertia would have to overcome the instability, and the two timelines would merge into one!”
“You mean sort of like a timestream split in reverse?” said Phoenix, frowning.
“Not bad,” said Darkness. “That’s a very good way of putting it. Sometimes I underestimate you. You may be a little slow, but you do learn.”
“Thanks,” said Phoenix wryly.”But what does it all mean?”
Darkness shook his head. “I see I spoke too soon. Very well, let me put it to you this way: you’re faced with a situation in which you are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. On the one hand you have temporal instability caused by chronophysical misalignment, bringing two separate timelines too close together and causing them to intersect as a result of the interaction of their temporal fields.”
“The confluence effect.”
“Exactly. On the other hand this confluence effect causes a surge in temporal inertia at the confluence points, which affects both timelines simultaneously, increasing the confluence phenomenon.”
“And if it keeps happening, you’d wind up with a single merged timeline,” Phoenix said. “So in order to prevent that, you have to do something to reduce or eliminate the confluence effect.”
“Correct. And?”
“And … and if the confluence effect is a result of the Fate Factor trying to compensate for temporal instability … you try to reduce the confluence effect by increasing the instability?”
“Bravo. We’ll make a temporal physicist of you yet.”
“But … that’s crazy!” Phoenix said. “The more you increase temporal instability, the greater the chance of bringing about a timestream split!”
“Ah, but in which timeline?”
“The one with the greater instability?”
“Pour yourself another drink, lad. You’ve just hit the nail right on the head. A timestream split would be almost certain to overcome the confluence effect, and it could result in changing the chronophysical alignment between the two timelines, forcing them apart, in a manner of speaking. But that’s only in theory. And it’s only one possibility.”
“What are the other possibilities?”
“Theoretically it could also result in three timelines experiencing points of confluence with an exponential increase in the instability factor. Then the same thing would begin all over again, only you’d have three timelines trying to achieve stability by merging into one. And in order to prevent that, you’d have to increase the instability again to a point where it would overwhelm the compensating influence of the Fate Factor, and you could wind up with yet another timestream split, resulting in four timelines, and so on ad infinitum. You’d be trapped in a situation where you’d have passed a point of no return and the only way to make it better, for the short term, would be to keep on making it worse.”
“Jesus. Where would it all end?”
“You’ve got me. What’s the absolute opposite of entropy?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“I don’t know either. Could be the Big Bang all over again.”
“So what the hell do we do?”
“Dr. Darkness does not, alas, know everything,” the scientist said, sighing heavily. “I must admit to a certain morbid fascination with all this. What an incredible opportunity for research. This could enable us to quantify Zen physics. We could be in a position to actually observe—”
“‘Doc!”
“What? Oh, sorry. You must forgive my enthusiasm. Occupational hazard. I’ll try to keep a lid on it.”
“So what’s the answer?”
“What’s the question?”
“What do we do about this mess?”
“Stall.”
“What do you mean, stall? How?”
“Well, since no clear-cut solution seems to present itself, the most we can do under the circumstances is to maintain the status quo as long as possible,” said Darkness. “The people from the alternate timeline are obviously attempting to hit us with a massive temporal first strike, trying to cause a significant historical disruption that might lead to a timestream split in our own timeline. We must not only prevent that, we must strike back at them in the same way. They interfere with our history, we interfere with theirs; each of us tries to adjust for the disruptions and maintain the instability as long as possible while trying to preserve a reasonable amount of temporal integrity on both sides.”
Phoenix stared at him, slack-jawed. “Are you serious?
“I’m very serious. It doesn’t solve the problem, admittedly, but it might keep it from getting worse. And it does have the added benefit of giving everyone a common enemy. No more temporal conflicts between nations. Everyone will be too busy fighting against the other timeline. It could have considerable domestic advantages. Now we’ll really have a Time War on our hands.”
“And just how long do we keep this up?” said Phoenix.
Darkness shrugged.
“Christ. I think I need another drink.”
Chapter 9
They were taken to a large chamber in the temple and locked inside. The massive wooden door was thick, bolted, and reinforced with iron. There were no windows in the chamber, but light filtered in from the top of a short flight of stairs. There were two large, thick pillars in the center of the room, supporting the ceiling. The walls were mortared stone. Learoyd, Ortheris, and Mulvaney had already been brought there, but they were still unconscious. Gunga Din climbed the flight of stairs, and a moment later they heard him call out. They followed him up the stairs.
“Sahib Finn! Memsahib Cross! Look!”
The stairs ended on a parapet built out of the side of a mountain cliff. Below them was an abyss, a sheer drop to the bottom of the Khyber Pass.
“It’s a long way down,” said Finn.
“Looks like we’re stuck,” said Andre.
“Sahib Finn, how we come here? Who are these people?”
“I don’t know how to tell you, Din,” said Finn.
“They are demon
s!”
“No, Din, they’re not demons. Just … powerful fakirs.”He shrugged. How else could he explain it?
“They will kill us, yes?” Din said.
“I don’t know.”
“Soldier sahibs dead.”
“No, they’re not dead, Din. Drugged. They’ll be waking up before too long.”
“This place… Kali worship,” Din said. “These men serve Kali. Thugee. Kill us all.”
“We’re not dead yet. Go keep an eye on Mulvaney and the others. They should be coming ‘round soon.”
Shaking his head in despair, Din shuffled back down the stairs.
“Finn, look!” said Andre.
She pointed down into the pass. Far below them two men appeared out of the mist, rising up toward them rapidly on jet-paks. They entered the temple through another chamber cut into the side of the cliff below them.
“That’s how they’re getting through,” said Finn. “The bridge between the timelines must be down there.”
“What about the British troops stationed in the pass?” said Andre. “What about the forts?”
“Undoubtedly taken over,” Finn said. “Some of those tribesmen we saw in the main chamber were wearing khakis and turbans with red swatches of cloth in them. Khyber Rifles. These people have taken advantage of the jehad to get all the tribesmen on their side. The Ghazis must think they’re gods or something.”
“Finn, that’s it!” said Andre, grabbing him by the arm. “According to history, Sadullah promised the tribes they’d defeat the British on the Night of the Long Knives, when the gates of Paradise would open and a great heavenly host would come forth to help them drive out the infidels.” She pointed down into the pass. “That’s where they’ll be coming through. They’ll fight on the side of the Ghazis, and the British won’t stand a chance.”
“It makes sense,” said Finn. “While Blood was putting down the uprising in the Malakand, the Mad Mullah escaped and joined Sayyid Akbar in the Khyber Pass. They overran Landi Kotal and burned every fort in their path. Akbar demanded the withdrawal of all British forces. To stop him, the British sent the Tirah Expeditionary Force under General Sir William, Lockhart. Their objective was to defeat Akbar and then strike at the tribes in the Tirah Valley. That crushed the revolt.”
