The Empire of Time

by Crawford Kilian

  The Facility, larger than it had been five years before, was a sprawling grid of streets and buildings separated from the launching pads and missile-assembly center by a low ridge. Some kilometers away, Pierce saw smoke on the hills.

  “So the endos are back.”

  “No trouble now. No real trouble, that is.”

  “Ah?”

  “They steal a lot. Even inside the Facility. Don’t ask me how they get through the wire and the detection system. But at least they don’t kill.” He grinned at Pierce, mischievously. “We caught one a few weeks ago. Told him we’d call back the Death walker if they didn’t quit raiding us, and sent him back to Klasayat.”

  “Klasayat!” Pierce was both pleased and mortified. Five years ago, the Grasslanders had been a serious nuisance, and their leader, Klasayat, had shown great skill in conducting a guerilla war with stolen weapons. Likable, troublesome people. Pierce had regretted having to direct their extermination. Oddly enough, they had liked him too. They had called him Jerry Missanan’kaa, the Deathwalker—high praise. But how had any of them escaped the spectrum of plagues he had spread across their territory? Professionally, Pierce was embarrassed; personally, he was glad. He rarely had the chance to respect his opponents.

  “I guess I’ll have to finish them off once and for all.”

  “Don’t bother. They keep us on our toes. And Klasayat’s days are numbered. Their last women died almost a year ago; his boys will be drifting off pretty soon.”

  Cold consolation; Pierce hated a sloppy kill.

  A small jet fighter appeared out of nowhere and circled the Pipit like a hawk intercepting a dragonfly. Younger murmured a code phrase into his throat mike; the jet turned away and vanished into the sun.

  “Very touchy about intruders,” Pierce observed.

  “Too touchy. We inherited most of the old military paranoia. Not much to be paranoid about—most of the space projects are pure research. Unmanned probes to the outer planets, radio astronomy, that kind of thing.” He looked mildly embarrassed. “Anita !Kosi was working here for a while, but Seamus Brown asked to have her transferred.” Brown was the supervisor of the Facility, and a very, very good rocket engineer.

  Pierce looked puzzled.

  “Internal politics. She began demanding too much for her pet project—research into hypermagnetic fields for radio astronomy.”

  “Project Sherlock.” Pierce recognized the name from his Briefing. It made him tense, though he didn’t know why. But in Younger he could discern no tension, only the annoyance of an administrator compelled to expedient measures despite himself.

  “Right. It was costing a fortune. Seamus Brown’s still supporting the project, but he cut the hell out of the budget.” He looked at Pierce and shrugged. “I could please Anita and disrupt everyone else, or move her. Temporarily. So that’s what I did. There’s no lack of work here for a genius.”

  The Pipit curved away from the skeletal gantries of Mojave Verde, back toward the coast. Pierce could see other installations: the Institute for Ulronic Studies, where scavenged items were examined and puzzled over; the Biotronics Lab, where cyborgs were built and dismantled; the Materials Research Unit; and the Intense Fields Station, where even gravity sometimes faded or tilted.

  “I see one big change since ’05,” said Pierce.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re doing basic research all over the WDS, not just building weapons.”

  “That’s no secret—but we don’t publicize the fact.”

  “Why?”

  “Suppose the British were warned in 1910 that the Germans would one day attack them with long-range bombers and guided missiles. What sort of defenses could the Brits have come up with? Dirigibles against V-2s? Their best bet would be to push pure science, and screw the secret weapons for a few years until they’d learned something. Without anyone saying so out loud, that’s what we’ve decided. Oh, the weapons stuff goes on, but no one’s very interested.”

  “Pacifists?”

  Younger laughed delightedly. “No, no, they want really nasty weapons, not just death rays. They’d like to build movable black holes you could drop a planet into, but we don’t know enough to do that yet. So all the brightest people are in basic research.”

  “You’re all saboteurs!”

  “In a way. But Gersen’s famous memo is a pile of shit. He’s a bright man, for an unTrainable, but he and his people see conspiracies when it’s just home-style entropy at work. The bastard has got us twitching, though.”

  “The memo’s increased his influence here?”

  “Yes, unfortunately. And it was already considerable.”

  “Why?”

  “Gersen’s a parallel power to me. Most of our funding comes directly from the International Federation, administered by AID. But the Colonies invest in us, too, and Gersen’s their broker.”

  “Of course.” Pierce recalled several WDS projects initiated by Colonial governments: Thel wanted to create ice-free harbors north of 45º; Los wanted better seismic predictions and improved storage batteries.

  “So Gersen influences events here.”

  “Very much so. Even some of my senior people owe him favors; when he wants something, they help him get it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Usually it’s lubrication for some colonial project—more people, improved computer access, that sort of stuff. Gersen retains a lot of clout among the Colonial bureaucrats, because he can make Trainables do his bidding.”

  “His politics?”

  “Impeccably bland.”

  “I doubt it,” Pierce said as the Pipit whirred softly down to the roof of the Holiday Inn in downtown Los Alamitos. Younger looked sharply at him.

  “The son of a bitch is up to something,” said Pierce. “I don’t know what, but it’s probably treasonous.”

  “Strong talk.”

  Pierce did not reply. He pulled his suitcase out from behind the seat and clambered down onto the helicopter pad. Then he leaned back into the Pipit. “I want the full records of every Colonial research project, past and present. Dossiers on everyone connected with those projects, including the Colonial liaison people. Oh, and dossiers on every Copo on Orc, past and present. Okay?”

  Younger nodded. “When?”

  “By 1900 hours.”

  “No pain.”

  “One more thing. I want four absolutely reliable people from your own Security team—not from McGowan. One here on the roof, one roving the hotel, two outside my room. Get ’em in place as soon as possible.”

  “It’s that serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll be on their way in five minutes.”

  “Good. I may want to see you again sometime tonight, but for sure we should meet tomorrow morning.”

  “When?”

  “When we decide which projects to suspend and whom to put under arrest.”

  Younger grinned and waved good-bye. The Pipit lifted off as Pierce headed downstairs to his room. He began visualizing its layout and approaches, the points in neighboring buildings which overlooked it. The room was not as protected as he would have liked, but it would do. It had to. To change rooms would involve trusting unTrainable hotel employees, and Pierce now trusted no such person on Ore.

  Younger was as good as his word. The four guards—one woman, three men—arrived almost as soon as Pierce did. They were calm, relaxed, nondescript, and they listened well. Pierce assigned them to their stations and took a catnap until the first of several messengers arrived with cartons of microfiches. Though facsimile transmissions direct to his room could have been arranged, they might have been monitored.

  The afternoon wore into evening as Pierce flickread through thousands of documents, pausing only for a perfunctory supper. He read them in no particular order, knowing his subconscious would file and organize everything. By 2200 hours, he knew a very great deal about every WDS project ever funded by Colonial governments; he was familiar with the records of every scientis
t and technician associated with those projects and he had reviewed the records of every Colonial Police officer on Orc since the Copos had been established here.

  Several items interested him. First, the involvement of Anita !Kosi in Project Sherlock. She was, of course, one of the most renowned scientists on any chronoplane. Together with the fifteen other members of her family, she was justification enough for the entire Testing and Recruitment Program, for the !Kosis were all Trainables, even those who were already adults when Tested. They were Boskopoids, big-brained ancestors of the Bushman peoples from Luvah, and in the decade since their discovery they had made a dozen major contributions to science. If Anita !Kosis was interested in Sherlock, there had to be value in the project. If she had been removed, the pressure on Younger must have been intense. Intense enough to make him prefer the scandal that would erupt if the removal were publicized.

  Pierce had no doubt about the chief source of that pressure: Seamus Brown. Judging by his thick file, Brown was a complex man: four marriages and any number of sexual liaisons; membership both in scientific societies and in some crank groups. Though he privately dismissed the alien-invader Doomsday theory, he publicly exploited it to sustain IF funding of his missile programs. Did not drink or smoke. Played squash once a week with Harry McGowan, among others, but made insulting remarks about McGowan to Trainables. Ran the Missile Facility with a heavy hand, and generally got results.

  Project Sherlock itself was clever, but seemed nothing special. Using a hint or two found in some Ulronian documents, a team led by Anita !Kosi had developed a modified hypermagnetic generator and had four of them installed in a Daedalus missile. After launch, the missile was to be placed in stationary orbit whereupon the generators would be turned on and dispersed. In theory that would create a very large field—a kind of magnetic lens millions of kilometers in diameter, capable of focusing electromagnetic radiation from the most distant galaxies—and of picking up any artificial radio signals originating within a thousand light-years. That capability, presumably, had ensured approval for the project; radio astronomy had flourished for years thanks to public fear of alien invaders. But Pierce saw nothing notable in Sherlock, apart from some technical details and the fact that it was prodigiously expensive. Politics again. Someone—probably Seamus Brown, possibly others as well—was using the project for private purposes. Pierce did not waste time spinning theories about Sherlock; the facts would come to light in due course.

  The Copo files yielded much more interesting information. Three years ago, Pierce had exposed a Secessionist network in the Colonial Police here. Most of its members had been older men, former officers in the armies of Earth who had preferred rustication downtime to alcoholic retirement in Arizona, the Balearics, or the Crimea. UnTrainables, of course, and still soaked in their smelly little nationalisms, they had concocted a few imaginary grievances and begun to plan a coup. Once they were in control of Orc, they had deceived themselves, the International Federation would treat them as a sovereign state and agree to relax Agency policies in exchange for continued immigration and trade. That was a persistent fantasy among Colonials, one that had provided plenty of work for Agents like Pierce.

  The plot had been as thickheaded as its authors, and Pierce had had no trouble rounding up all two hundred conspirators before they could take any action. A few had been sent to penal colonies, but most had been cashiered and kicked off Orc to less sensitive worlds. The Copos as a force were in disgrace and had been replaced in the WDS by Site Security, a Trainable corps.

  Six months later, however, Gersen had established a Copo Special Reserve, and within a year almost a hundred of the former Secessionists had enlisted. They had drifted back to Orc by one means or another: with official pardons, under assumed identities, perhaps even through the illegal I-Screens used by knotholers. The Special Reserves had been moved quietly about since then, and in the past six months most had been based in Farallon City, engaging in little more than small-arms training. To Pierce, they looked like the nucleus of a putsch. A suicidal putsch, since AID’s armed forces could crush the combined Colonies in a day, pouring men and machines onto every chronoplane from a hundred I-Screens.

  He put down his flickreader, got up from his armchair, and walked in slow, controlled steps up and down the room, automatically avoiding the windows. He wanted very much to smash something. It was not the putsch that infuriated him; it was the gross incompetence that had allowed it to get this far. In the old days, when he had been a T-Colonel, he had known everything, everything, that went on in his district. It had been said with little exaggeration that if two hookers exchanged political opinions at midnight in the ladies’ room of the sleaziest bar in Mountain Home, Pierce would know it by morning.

  But now Trainable slovenliness had encouraged this threat to one of the most important installations on twelve chronoplanes. Trainables had allowed disgruntled settlers to colonize; they had ignored Gersen’s formation of a private Copo army of convicted traitors; they had ignored a media fog clumsy enough to be spotted by any Trainable at a glance; and they had allowed unTrainables to exert influence on WDS scientists, even on a !Kosi. Incredible!

  The scandal would be massive. Pierce took some consolation in that. There would be questions asked in the IF Assembly. AID was overdue for a purge and a tightening up, and this mess would provide ample justification. Wigner might even let some of the details leak to the media.

  —Wigner knows already.

  The thought slipped away, almost like a dream forgotten in waking, and Pierce had to fight to get it back. Wigner knows already, or knows a lot. That’s why I’m blocked, because Gersen’s boys might pick me up. And that’s why I wanted to kill Gersen and Shih and McGowan—because once I’ve got the goods on them, they’ll need killing.

  Pierce had a headache. After speaking briefly with one of the guards in the hall, he went to bed. Why, then, did Gersen ask the Agency to intervene? What’s with all this sabotage crap?

  He slept poorly, and rose early. In the early dawn, Los Alamitos was still and lovely, its broad streets empty except for an occasional Copo patrol car. The Santa Monica Mountains, crested with snow, glowed pink in the first rays of the sun. It was a beautiful world. They all were.

  Pierce dressed and went out to dismiss his guards. Then he walked downstairs to the parking basement, where Younger had left a Tovota sedan for his use. A quick check showed no one had tampered with it. He drove out, headed for Younger’s home.

  The Director lived in Palisades, a beach suburb of Los Alamitos. His rambling cedar house stood on a low cliff above the cold blue sea; along the foot of the cliff, a narrow sandy beach stretched for kilometers without a footprint. The nearest neighbor was half a kilometer away.

  Pierce interrupted breakfast; Younger brought him into a glass-walled kitchen whose table was set for two. There was a hint of perfume in the air.

  “Chloe doesn’t like dealing with people this early in the day,” Younger said. “In any case, I presume she wouldn’t be interested in what you have to say.” He smiled, pouring Pierce some coffee.

  “And what do I have to say?”

  “Let’s talk after breakfast.” He mouthed: We may be bugged. Pierce nodded. Younger made him a substantial breakfast, and they chatted about the fine weather and lovely view. Then they went outside.

  Younger led him down a trail to the beach, where the surf thumped and hissed. They walked south, their feet sinking a little into the soft, wet sand.

  “Something smells,” Pierce said. He told Younger what he had learned.

  “It’s embarrassing to have a putsch here, of all places,” Younger said when Pierce finished. “But it’s not, mm, unheard of.”

  “We put down at least four or five a year. Most are just cultie revolts—death to the Antichrist, whatever. But this one is going to tear the Agency apart.”

  “But Gersen called the Agency in.”

  “He may have been afraid we’d eventually get wind of his plans.
When suspected of a major crime, admit to a minor one. So he yelled sabotage and thought that might distract us until the putsch was ready.”

  “They must know they can’t possibly win.”

  “No, they think they can. They think they have a gimmick, something we don’t expect and can’t counter. Presumably a WDS gimmick.”

  Younger stopped walking. “That means collusion with some of my people.”

  “Seamus Brown does play squash every week with Harry McGowan.”

  “Ah.”

  “I want Brown arrested, right away. And the Site must be sealed off for a day or two. Use just your own Security people, no Copos. Meanwhile, I’ll get a message through your I-Screen to Wigner. The Agency will dump a battalion of Gurkhas on Farallon City to handle Gersen’s Special Reserves.”

  They turned and began striding back along the beach. The sun threw their shadows across the advancing foam of the surf.

  “Anything else?” Younger asked.

  “I’d better talk to Anita !Kosi. She may know something about the gimmick.”

  “I’ll call her right away.” Younger nodded. Then he pitched forward onto the sand. Pierce saw the yellow tail of a flechette protruding from Younger’s back and instantly dropped and began to roll. The shot aimed at him struck his left shoulder instead of his torso. The flechettes were loaded with a fast-acting paralytic drug: Pierce found he could still breathe, with effort, but could not move. He sprawled on his side, looking at Younger death-still a few paces away. A wave washed over Younger, but stopped before reaching Pierce. Withdrawing, the wave turned Younger over so he faced the sky. Younger’s chest moved, very slowly.

  Pierce heard distant footsteps. Two men, he decided, hurrying down the cliff through the brush. If they were far enough away, his body might be able to metabolize the drug before they reached him.