Timediver's Dawn

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The latch was rusty, but functional. I scrambled until I found an old wooden bar and slid it into place. Then I looked around in the dimness.

  Some little light filtered in from the cracks in the wooden shutters that covered the unglassed window. My feet left tracks in the thin layer of dust that blanketed everything.

  Inside were two benches and a table, all of rough wood polished only by time and summer usage. But the bench was as welcome as any soft chair anywhere. Off came the pack, and out came the food. I was so hungry I was drooling. A growl from my guts reminded me not to gulp it down whole. Beginning with a dried chyst, I chewed each bit thoroughly.

  With the first mouthful, my shakes began to abate. After I finished the chyst and a chunk of tough but welcome jerky, interspersed with several sips from the small water bottle Allyson had packed, the headache began to lift.

  Clearly, my out-of-time or out-of-place travel took energy, lots of it, and I had started out with an empty stomach.

  Sitting there in the way station, I tried to call up the black curtain and the contradictory intersection. While I could bring them into mental focus, the effort set off another headache. The warning was sufficient, and I relaxed and started in on a dried pearapple.

  After that, I studied the way station. Four log walls, one with a shuttered window, and one with a heavy door. The roof was not raised, but angled. The log wall which had the door was lower than the back wall, and three timbers, each a handspan wide, ran from front to back. The angle also provided the overhang for the unrailed front porch I had ignored during my staggering entrance.

  Just the summer before, Mother and I had sat there, watching the rain come down.

  “Not many people come here any more, Sammis,” she had said. “We’re not the physical people

  I . . . we once were.”

  She had always looked younger than she was, just as I did. On the way up the trail, someone had noted that it was nice to see a brother and sister on such friendly terms. I was too embarrassed to make the correction, and she had just smiled an amused smile.

  Yet I knew she was older than my father. That’s what the marriage book had shown.

  In the early winter dawn, I dropped back from that memory, cut as if by a knife at the thought that I might never see either my mother or father again.

  I carefully rewrapped the food, leaving out one last piece of jerky, and replaced the remainder in my pack. As I chewed, I tried to sort out everything that had happened in the last few days.

  First, someone or something had attacked the ConFederation forces on Mithrada and apparently destroyed the planet-forming stations and most of the spacecraft—if the rumours were correct. At least some of the orbital power stations were damaged or destroyed. Nothing was being broadcast from Inequital and from the west. A detachment of ConFed Marines had burned my family’s ancestral home. Strange storms and weather had struck Bremarlyn and perhaps much of Westra. Yet there were no strange aircraft, no battles nearby, and no other military forces.

  Last of all, somehow, I was learning to travel, or slide out of places and into places, and that travel took as much effort as playing a whole centreslot game, maybe more.

  What was I going to do? I had some theoretical knowledge, a little skill with woodworking tools. Small for my age, if stronger than many a head taller, and looking even younger than my size—I couldn’t pass as a casual labourer. Not with my gentry talk and uncalloused hands. Or as an orphan of sorts. The gentry didn’t abandon children—ever. There were too few.

  I didn’t have an answer, but I couldn’t stay in the woods for too long. And I had no idea how I would be able to find my parents—or what had happened to them without having the same thing happen to me.

  For the moment, the problems had to subside with the waves of exhaustion that swept over me. I staggered to my feet and pushed one of the two benches around the table and got both of them side by side. With the pack as a pillow and my cloak as a blanket, I went to sleep. Without a single dream, for the first time in days.

  XIV

  ON THE CONSOLE screen in the laboratory a map appeared, one illustrating the outline of a continent in relief. In addition to the greens and browns depicting different elevations were traceries of red dashed lines. All the dashed lines either began or terminated at the same point near the centre of the continent.

  The researcher in blue sitting before the screen tapped in a series of commands, and the map vanished, replaced by a chart resembling a star map. She touched the controls, and a three-dimensional version of the star chart appeared. In the centre was a red dot, and a handful of red dashed lines curved outward from the red dot. Most ended with a circled black star.

  With a frown, the researcher touched the keyboard again. The star map vanished, replaced in turn by a chart listing names, with four columns of entries after each name.

  A black star preceded the majority of the names, and those the researcher ignored as she studied in turn the entries following each unstarred name.

  Occasionally, she sighed, and the noise echoed in the dimness.

  Once the console flickered, as did the power panel lights on the monitoring equipment arrayed around a bare raised platform to her right. The platform stood in roughly the middle of the laboratory, surrounded at equidistant points by four consoles with screens.

  Only the console occupied by the lone researcher was functioning.

  The researcher glanced at the screen before her, then at the series of inked designs she had added on one side of the hard copy of the report beside the keyboard.

  Again, the lights flickered, then failed, plunging the room into darkness and wiping the screen blank.

  Sighing once more, the researcher waited, as if to see whether the power would return.

  Wheep.

  With the return of the lights, the screen relit, but displayed only a featureless blue.

  The woman touched several keys, and the screen went black. She took a deep breath, then lifted the thin report that lay on the flat space to the right of the screen and slid it into the drawer in the console under the screen, shaking her head as she did so. Her sandy blond hair flared slightly with the movement, then bounced as she rose fluidly from the chair, and walked toward the bare platform in the middle of the laboratory.

  Click. Her fingers turned off the monitoring equipment on the right hand side of the platform.

  When all the power light panels were dark, she stepped upon the platform and looked around, taking another deep breath, as if attempting a plunge into icy cold water.

  With a sad smile, she vanished.

  The room remained unpowered, but waiting.

  Outside, the emergency etheline generator coughed, and the single set of lights illuminating the console where she had been seated flickered.

  The researcher reappeared on the platform, smiling but shaking her head.

  Droplets of water cascaded from her onto the platform. Her blue tunic and trousers were soaked, and the thin fabric clung to her like a second skin, outlining a slightly curved and youthful figure.

  The lights flickered one last time and went out, leaving the windowless laboratory in near-total darkness, as the emergency generator coughed on the last drops of etheline.

  The researcher walked surefootedly toward the doorway, leaving behind a trail of damp footprints that had already begun to fade as she slipped from the laboratory.

  XV

  THE LONG WALL Trail ended nearly five kays from the outskirts of Herfidian, itself a good twenty kays east of Bremarlyn by the Eastern Highway. None of the way stations had offered anything but shelter.

  While shelter was indeed welcome amid the continuing strange alternation of snow and ice rain and sunlight and crisp fall afternoons, food was my biggest problem. Water was available from the cascades and the brooks, for the temperature never dropped far enough to freeze more than skim ice over running water. The abrupt changes in temperature had spoiled most of the wild fruits and berries. I had
found one blue chyst in a copse of trees near the second way station. The blues are terribly bitter, but nearly a dozen were clear and edible.

  I ate one on the spot and put the others in my pack, hoping to save what dried food was left as long as possible.

  Rabbits were plentiful, and curious. But I had no way to kill them at a distance, and didn’t seem to be able to stalk them. More important, I still didn’t like the thought of killing them. Even at home, I’d never been a big meat-eater. Neither had Mother, and my father had teased her about it, saying that it was the secret to her youthfulness.

  From the ridge line part of the trail, I had noticed some other strange changes. In places, huge circles appeared to have been cut out of the forest, and nothing remained but a fine dust. Those places seemed to be near the Eastern Highway, some distance from the trail, and the only things that were left standing were natural hills or the heavy foundation stones of barns or buildings.

  It looked like the work of an enemy, because the destruction appeared to be just in or around the inhabited places. But who was this unseen enemy?

  While I wasn’t about to find out in the hills, trudging along the Long Wall Trail toward the east, I also wasn’t in a hurry to make myself visible. What I could have used was a bath or a shower. Despite the earlier snows and sleet, the air was still dusty, so much so that I often found myself sneezing as I made my way eastward.

  When I finally stood by the stone marker—the one that said “Long Wall Trail, in memory of Kenth, last Duke of Ronwic”—that signified the end or the beginning of the trail, depending on which way you were going, I still had no real idea what I would do. I couldn’t live in the woods, and I had no living relatives—except a second cousin of my father’s that I had met exactly once who lived somewhere in Inequital.

  The sky was overcast, and the strange dark cloud pillars continued to dominate the western sky, in the general area of Inequital, although the capital itself was farther than I could have seen. A light mist was falling. The air was mostly warm, although the occasional strange cold gusts still accompanied the warmer mist. The dirt of the trail below me was unmarked, sheltered by a double row of overhanging firs. Behind the firs were the usual mix of Westron trees, most of the leafy ones well toward losing their summer foliage and having but scraggly winter leaves.

  The marker sat about a hundred rods above the Eastern Highway. Why the trail ended near no town was a mystery to me, but I had never asked. All I knew was that I had another five kays to walk, and that I was getting hungry, and that I wanted a bath.

  The last seemed most unlikely. Food was probable, one way or another, and walking was certain for now. I didn’t dare waste the energy on place-sliding, not unless I was faced with an emergency, or worse.

  Before I headed toward the highway, I unstrapped my pack and set it on top of the flat stone marker, unfastened it, and removed the last blue chyst. After three days, even the blue ones didn’t taste too bad. I needed some energy, and otherwise there were only a few sticks of jerky and two small chunks of cheese left. Those I wanted to save.

  Allyson had done well, but like all good things her provisions were about to end. When I finished the chyst, nibbled all the way down to the hard seed, I tossed it into the deep brush to my right.

  Swwiiissshh.

  A grossjay swooped after it, almost catching the seed before it struck the ground. Times had apparently been hard for the birds as well. Grossjays were not known for their fondness for chyst seeds.

  I pulled the pack back on, shrugging my shoulders to try to relieve the stiffness that seemed permanent. Then I started down the trail, staying on the short grass on the side, avoiding the slippery combination of dirt and mud in the middle.

  The line of firs ended halfway to the highway, and I pulled up short, staying in their shade, as I could hear the rumble of a vehicle in the distance. Instead of walking along the road, stupid in any case, I kept under the overhang of the trees, where I stumbled every so often. While most of the trees were light-leafed for winter, between the mist and the evergreens, I wasn’t as exposed as I would be closer to the road, and I could hide quickly. The idea of hiding and skulking around bothered me, but being picked up by the ConFeds would have bothered me a lot more—especially since I didn’t know why they were after my family . . . and presumably me.

  After about a kay, the rumbling increased in pitch, and I dropped behind a pine, waiting.

  Over the hill from the west they came, clear even from a distance. First came a steamer, black, with a flag on the front bumper. The flag was the ConFed banner. Then there were two open steam freighters, carrying full loads covered with tarps. Last came an armoured steamer, the kind with the composite ceramic plates and a turret gun. The armoured steamer was wreathed in vapour as it rattled along.

  In my whole life, I had never seen such a detachment on the Eastern Highway, not near Bremarlyn, so far from Eastron, even father from the Northern Isles—although that conflict had been over even before my father was born.

  So I crouched in a hollow behind the pine and waited for them to pass out of sight. The wait wasn’t all loss, though. In looking around, I saw what might have been a stunted pearapple, behind the firs to my left, toward Herfidian. As I waited, watching, I marked the pearapple location and studied the steamer as it hum-hissed past my pine tree, less than five rods away. Double-tiered and totally enclosed, that black steamer was easily twice the size of my father’s official steamer. The black finish was wearing thin and beginning to show the reddish ceramic beneath, and the faded purple stripe along the side, across both doors, was also heavily scratched.

  I could feel the ground vibrate as the rest of the road convoy neared. The dull grey freighters looked newer, but still battered. Unlike the steamer, their cabs were open, and one had the windscreen folded down. Both were heavy-laden, with what appeared to be machines under the tarps. An armed ConFed stood in the guard booth at each corner of the cargo bay of each freighter. Eight armed ConFeds—in the centre of Westron, thousands of kays from the old borders. And they weren’t looking bored. I shrank down further behind the pine as the freighters neared. The guards had weapons out and kept scanning the roadside.

  How anyone would catch them I couldn’t imagine. All four were ravelling nearly as fast as a normal runabout.

  But someone had, clearly, because one of the armoured guard booths on the first freighter had projectile holes in it and a dull reddish smear on the shattered composite underneath.

  I decided not to move as the freighters passed, waiting for the labouring armoured steamer to come into my now-restricted view.

  The grey double plates were scratched, some of the scratches almost bleeding with red as the ceramic composite beneath showed through. The turret had a steel shield around the gun port. An armoured steamer with some steel—that was something else. Steel wasn’t that easy to come by any more.

  The acrid odour of old steam, old oil, and hot rubber permeated the area as the armed steamer rumbled past. It was the three-axle type, with shields over the double tires, and the gun in the top turret kept swivelling from point to point, although thankfully not in my direction.

  I stayed in the hollow behind the pine until the ConFed vehicles had disappeared over another low hill, and until the sound and vibration were gone as well. The bitter smell of abused machinery remained.

  I recalled the pearapple. Before I checked out the possibility of fruit, I made my way deeper into the brush, and relieved myself. Seeing the ConFed convoy had created a sudden urge for such relief.

  Then I pushed through the thickets of dead summer brush to the tree. Although the birds and weather had taken a toll, I found two partly good fruits. Using the old knife Allyson had left me, I cut away the rotten parts and ate the rest right there.

  After wiping the knife clean on some dried grass, and then on the hem edge of my cloak, and doing the same with sticky fingers, I made my way back to the edge of the highway and resumed hiking toward Herfidian
.

  As I neared the top of a low hill, perhaps the third after the place where I had encountered the convoy, something seemed wrong. My steps slowed, ears alert, eyes looking for a wisp of steam in the air. Sniff . . . sniff—even trying to detect a hint of the scent of oil and steam.

  Only the sound of a grossjay broke the stillness as I edged forward.

  I shook my head as I saw the emptiness that began just below the crest of the hill. Nothing but a few huge boulders rose out of the circular expanse of dust. It was though a giant lumberman had taken an axe and swung it at ground level in a circle, and then burned everything to dust—except the dust was a fine brownish powder, not grey or black like ashes, and there was no smell of burning. I thought I remembered the place . . . before . . . a water station with the old inn maintained more out of sentiment than anything else. My father had claimed the inn still served one of the better evening meals in the Bremarlyn area.

  Where the inn and its outbuildings had stood were only buried lumps, foundation stones covered with shifting dust. The old high firs were gone, as was the steep-pitched barn that dated back to the time of wagons and beasts.

  “. . . cccah . . . cuhh. . . CHEW. . .” Once the fine dust got into my nose, I couldn’t stop sneezing until my eyes were thoroughly running and my shoulders hurt from the violence of the sneezes. Had anyone been around, I would have been helpless.

  Finally, I gathered myself together, just short of the dusty wasteland that seemed to stretch nearly a kay before me. Only the tracks of ConFed convoy through the thinner cover over the road itself marred the dust, so light that it seemed to shift with even the slightest breath of air.

  How the steamers had made it through I wasn’t certain, but there was no way I was going to survive the sneezes and convulsions that each step would generate. Going around the edge would add another kay to the distance to Herfidian—assuming Herfidian was still there and not a dusty wasteland. Assuming I did not run into the ConFed Marines.