Gerloc closed his mouth, then took a sip of water.
Mellorie chuckled. “Guess what, Gerloc? He listens.”
With a sheepish grin, Gerloc looked at Mellorie, then back at me. “I gather I don’t have much choice.”
“You’re right. You don’t,” said Amenda pleasantly.
“I’ll skip the details of how I stumbled onto Sertis, because they’re in the notebooks you’ll be reading. I’m pretty limited in terms of how far back or forward I can travel—seems to be in the neighbourhood of fifteen hundred to two thousand years back and about half that forward. The
forward side is always shady. That’s because of the uncertainty factors, I gather . . .”
“You might try getting to the point . . .” Mellorie’s voice was friendly.
“I will. I am simply not as direct as you are, Mellorie.” Gerloc took another swallow and cleared his throat. “The point to which dear Mellorie refers is that Sertis doesn’t change. The buildings are occasionally modified, but the population and technology are always the same, at least as far as any of us have been able to tell.”
I frowned. “Does that mean we’re different? Or they are?”
“They are.” That was Mellorie. “We’ve found half a dozen other cultures out there, and they change. Dramatically, sometimes within local decades.”
I was still frowning. So what difference did it make whether one culture on another planet in another solar system was stable?
“You look even more displeased, Sammis.” Amenda’s voice was softer, less persistent than Mellorie, yet removed.
“I’m new here.” I swallowed, then spit out what I shouldn’t have said. “Everything I hear still sounds like a research project. All very interesting, but so what? We’ve been destroyed by an unseen enemy, and our entire civilisation is crashing around us, and we’re gathering data?”
Now Amenda and Gerloc were the ones frowning.
I found myself wiping my forehead with the cloth napkin, a true social blunder, but sweat was oozing from my forehead, despite the room’s coolness.
“Salads here.” With that a waitress set a bowl before each of us.
“Thank you.” My response was automatic.
The silence around the table lengthened as the waitress departed with a nod to me. No one else said anything. So I took a bite of the salad. Even with bitter reddish leaves interspersed with some mushrooms and wild onions, it was refreshing.
“What would you do, then?” Mellorie asked.
“I’m scarcely in charge,” I mumbled with a mouth half-full of leaves and crunchy mushrooms that tasted of nut-bark.
“That’s begging the question. You raised it.”
Gerloc and Amenda looked from Mellorie to me, and back, as if they were watching a contest.
“Something useful.”
Mellorie looked ready to snap back, when she smiled over my shoulder.
“May I interrupt?” Deric’s question was only half-whine.
“Of course,” Mellorie’s voice dripped syrup.
I turned, caught a glimpse of a woman and found myself standing and bowing. The old traditions don’t die.
“Sammis, I believe you know Dr. Relorn. I just wanted to reassure her that you had in fact arrived and were enjoying our hospitality.”
“Everyone has been most hospitable, Deric. Most hospitable.” I inclined my head toward my tablemates.
The doctor nodded politely under the makeup designed to make her look like an older woman trying to look young. “I’m glad to see you have been so well received, Sammis. Although I have interrupted an animated conversation, I do not intend to take much of your time.”
“It’s good to see you, Doctor, outside the testing laboratory, and I appreciate your efforts. Very much.” I bowed slightly, again.
“He’s quite the gentry, Doctor, isn’t he?” observed Deric.
“I believe he is, Deric. But he also survived the ConFeds.” She turned back to face me. “I hope you will enjoy working with us.”
“I’m certain I will, Doctor, especially under your direction.” I could have bitten my tongue for the last, particularly with Mellorie hanging on every word, but old habits die hard.
“Enjoy your dinner.” With that, she and Deric turned and headed toward a table set for two.
I sat down.
“Can you doubt he’s gentry born after that?” Amenda said to Gerloc.
“It was quite a performance, Sammis.” The corners of Mellorie’s mouth were twisted in a wry gesture.
I took the last mouthful of salad.
“Do you wish to honour us with your suggestions for what the laboratory should do amidst our crumbling culture?”
I set down my glass. “Pure knowledge isn’t much help when you’re facing someone armed with a riot gun or a crossbow. Within seasons, unless things change, we’ll be out of both ammunition, arms, and food, with no way to resupply ourselves.”
“So what do you want us to do?”
“I’ve been here one day, and I’m supposed to supply an answer?”
“That’s good enough for now, I think.” Mellorie’s voice had turned much softer. “You’re right. We see it too, but we don’t have an answer either.”
Amenda was suddenly looking at her nearly untouched salad.
Gerloc shrugged.
“You see, Sammis,” continued Mellorie, “we don’t have many action-oriented travellers left. Most of them left when the riots started.”
I understood. All too well. Those who had remained were the cautious ones, the scared ones, or those with no place to go. I understood all right. I was just like them. “I understand.”
“As a ConFed?” Amenda’s tone was gentle.
“There are ConFeds, and there are ConFeds,” noted Mellorie in a voice so low as to be little more than a whisper.
I ignored her observation. I didn’t want to distinguish between Odin Thor’s ConFeds and the ones that fired my home. “I understand—even as a ConFed. I didn’t have much choice, you know. No family, no friends, and every time I opened my mouth I was tagged as gentry.”
“You survived, though. That means you’re not exactly as helpless—“
“Here is the famous peffin casserole,” announced the waitress.
I still couldn’t believe that the Far Travel Laboratory had cooks and serving personnel. The waitress wasn’t young, probably in her early fifth decade, but she carried the casserole dish with authority and placed it in the centre of the table, laying two serving utensils beside it.
“I’ll serve,” announced Amenda. “Sammis?”
I handed over my platter, glad to have escaped, even momentarily, the questions that Mellorie kept throwing at me.
“Gerloc?”
Thuddd . . .
“LAZY BOORNIKS. MISERABLE GENLOVERS! MOTHER-SWILLS!”
The shouts would have roused the damps, let alone the modest dining area. I found myself turning and on my feet, recognising the voice.
Rarden was standing alone inside the doors bellowing. Looking through the undertime, I could see two other figures outside, but not who they were.
Because everyone seemed in shock, I was there even before the Seco who shadowed the doctor.
“Oh, it’s the brave little swamp rat, is it? Ready to defend the genlovers . . . but you’re one, too, aren’t you?”
I just looked up at him.
“So now they’ve bought themselves a real ConFed . . . cause the Secos aren’t enough.”
I ignored the Seco coming up behind me and took another step toward Rarden, stopping just short of easy reach.
“Rarden. Get the hell away from here.” I didn’t even raise my voice.
“Threaten me, swamp rat . . . go ahead, threaten me.”
“I don’t make threats.”
For some reason, he turned pale.
“You . . . always you . . .” He stumbled backwards and out the door.
I waited until he staggered back, and Selioman steered h
im down the corridor toward the outside entrance. Then I closed both double doors.
The Seco stood there holding the useless riot gun.
“Put that away. It won’t scare any of the ConFeds, just make them kill you quicker.” I walked around him.
Both Deric and the doctor were looking in my direction. I ignored them.
“No, he’s not exactly helpless,” muttered Mellorie. She flushed as she realised I had heard her comment to Gerloc and Amenda.
“I never said I was. I said I understood.” I was tired of trying to justify anything. So I didn’t. I just enjoyed the peffin casserole.
Neither of the other three said anything, either to each other, or to me, until the ubiquitous waitress collected the serving dish and our platters.
“Greffin is good with desserts,” volunteered Amenda.
Since I hadn’t had a dessert since before I had left the Academy, the idea sounded intriguing. “Such as?”
“Tonight is berrycream tort.”
I hadn’t cared much for desserts even when they had been available, and two bites were enough. I finished the tort on general principles. Desserts did contain an ample supply of calories.
Except for Mellorie’s comment, everyone ignored my actions in running Rarden off, as if they were in bad taste. Yet Rarden would have destroyed the entire dining room to get attention. In terms of my father’s background, though, my actions probably were in bad taste. My mother might have approved.
After dessert, Gerloc and Amenda rose together.
“Good night, Sammis, Mellorie.”
I half rose. “Good night.”
Mellorie nodded.
I reseated myself.
“You made quite an impression, Sammis.”
“An unfortunate impression.”
“You’re a rare one,” she mused, almost as if I were not there. “Your understanding is greater than your knowledge. You’re not afraid to act.”
“That’s not quite true, Mellorie.”
She just smiled.
She wasn’t listening, exactly, and I was tired of explaining.
“Would you care to walk me back to my quarters?” She extended her hand as she rose from the straight-backed dining chair.
“I’d be honoured, dear lady.”
So I walked her to her doorway, which was less than half a corridor from mine. That was all I did.
XXVII
AFTER PULLING OFF my boots, I stretched out on the bed, leaving the window open and listening to the breeze. I intended to enjoy the rustle of black oak leaves and the touch of crispness to the evening that would disappear over the days ahead.
The mattress was firm, but not rock-hard like a ConFed pallet. The pillows emphasised the nonmilitary nature of the Far Travel Lab.
For all the apparent friendliness of the dinner, and for all of the interest of Mellorie, including her almost-invitation into her quarters, things were just not what they seemed. None of them, except perhaps the doctor, appeared to understand that we had been attacked by an enemy we couldn’t even find, and that Query was collapsing around them. They just seemed to be going through the motions.
Mellorie seemed to be the only one actually thinking, and I wondered how much that was from contrariness. Her on and off invitations left me confused.
Then there was the doctor, clearly made up to be as old as she claimed, rather than as old as she looked. I knew how old she could be, but I didn’t believe it. The woman had to be decades older than me, for all that she looked like a young woman, for all that she wore severe and dowdy clothes to project an image older than she was. The silver streaks in her hair were probably dyed, since they didn’t go all the way to the roots.
Outside, the twilight slowly faded into gloom, leaving my room, with its single wide window, even darker.
Chhhiritt, chhirritt . . . The sound of some night bird drifted through the open window.
Why had Dr. Wryan Relorn even listened to me on that night I had invaded her laboratory, let alone gone out of her way to have me transferred out of the ConFeds? If Deric were any example, her own senior staffers weren’t exactly thrilled about my presence.
Nothing quite added up. The laboratory had been and still was gathering essentially useless data while it could have been performing a function vital to the Westron Monarchy. Except there wasn’t a monarchy. There wasn’t even a capital city. The nominal second-in-command verged on incompetent. Unless the doctor were keeping it to herself, no one had thought about redirecting the role of the divers to fit the current situation.
I shook my head, then stared into the darkness. Not that darkness was a barrier to someone who could look through the undertime. That raised another question—why couldn’t the other divers see? Even Dr. Relorn seemed only to be able to see from the undertime, not through it.
Shrugging again, I sat up on the edge of the bed and pulled my boots back on. Waiting wouldn’t provide me with any more answers.
As I slipped under the now for the short dive across to the other building, I wondered if anyone could track me in the same way I had found the doctor.
She was alone, sitting in one of the comfortable armchairs, leafing through a thick notebook.
“Greetings.”
“Greeting, Sammis.”
“You were expecting me.”
“I thought you might show up . . . although I wasn’t certain exactly when.” She had removed the heavy makeup and looked years, if not decades younger. “You have some questions? Good. So do I.”
I took the other chair without waiting for it to be offered. “Why don’t your travellers do anything?”
She smiled faintly. “What would you have them do?”
“Everything is crumbling around us . . . couldn’t they bring back some technology . . . something . . . ?”
“Such as?”
I felt like I were back in school. “What have I missed?”
She grinned. “Very bright . . .” After shifting her weight and crossing one trousered leg over another, she added, “You know none of my travellers can carry very much. That means we can’t bring back metals— which we need—not in any meaningful quantity. We can’t bring back equipment that we cannot understand, or that requires different power inputs. When you think about it, that doesn’t leave much.”
“What about knowledge?”
“How can you translate it into usable equipment?”
This time the silence stretched out as I thought and she silently waited. “I’m not educated, Doctor . . .”
“Just call me Wryan. You’re far more educated than most people left around here, including the ones with degrees and honours.”
Both her comments left me open-mouthed, at least momentarily. “I have to disagree, Doc—“
“Wryan.” Her tone was no-nonsense.
“Are you called Wryan by the other divers?”
“No.”
I shook my head, knowing from her tone that she wasn’t about to explain. As she set down the notebook and leaned forward to place it on the low table, I watched, somehow taking in the grace of her movements.
Finally, I spoke again. “It still seems to me that we could benefit from what other cultures have to offer.”
“We could—if we could find it, understand it, and copy it.”
“Finding it . . .” I shut my mouth. What an idiot I had been! No wonder they had problems. None of them had learned how to see into real time from the undertime, and searching a culture by having to break out every time you went someplace would prove too exhausting for much productive effort. “I see . . .” But there was one item . . . and I saw that, too. “Weapons . . . is that why the colonel-general . . . ?”
She nodded.
I realised there was something else I had not told her. “He’s also a diver.”
“The colonel-general? How do you know?”
I took a deep breath, wondering whether I could trust this doctor I scarcely knew, deciding I could, and thinking I was a fool fo
r it. “The energies play around him the way they do around all the divers.”
“In the undertime?”
“Yes.”
“That was how you found me?”
It was my turn to nod.
“Who else knows?”
“About the colonel-general? No one I know of. I’m not sure he knows.”
“That would make sense.” She frowned, and I could see the darkness behind her eyes that was the only indication of her age. Otherwise, seated less than two paces from me, she could have been nearly a contemporary. “Does anyone else know how you found out.”
“No. Probably shouldn’t have told you . . .”
She smiled, and I couldn’t help but feel better. The smile wasn’t the professional one she had presented at dinner, but more impish . . . more personal.
I found myself smiling back.
“Would you like some cider? Hot?”
Hot cider? That last one who had offered me hot cider had been Allyson . . . had it been years ago?
“Are you all right?”
Her concern just made it worse, and at first I could barely keep from shaking. Then I couldn’t, and I couldn’t see, either. I could feel her hands on my shoulders, but she didn’t say anything, and neither did I.
After a while, she handed me a small soft towel, and I wiped my face.
“I’m sorry . . .” She was kneeling next to my chair with one hand covering mine.
I just shook my head again, not really wanting to speak.
How long she stayed by me I didn’t know, but when I looked at the small antique clock on the wall, the hands registered past midnight.
“Sorry . . .”
“Don’t be . . . I’m glad I was here.”
I just nodded.
“I meant it, Sammis.”
“Talk to me . . . about you . . .”
“All right . . .” She shifted her position on the floor, and I let go of her hand. “Do you mind if I move? I think my legs are mostly asleep . . .”
“Oh . . . I didn’t—“
“Don’t worry about it.” She reseated herself in the other chair and rubbed her calves with one hand. “There’s not that much to say . . .”
But she did talk, about growing up as an orphan in the cold of Southpoint, having to sneak off when she realised she was not changing in looks, except to look more and more like her mother, the lady lost at sea and termed the “witch-captain.” In posing as a wanton gentry daughter, she managed to accrue a degree or two from some of the lesser southern Westron universities, which she had used to get into the civil science bureaucracy . . .
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