While I could detect Wryan in the undertime, as usual, there was no sense of feeling, no sense of movement, until we lanced back into the now, right in the middle of a cloudburst.
“Should have looked first,” I sputtered.
Wryan let go of my hand and dashed through the muddy street and into a half-completed cottage. I followed, since the building did have a roof and the rain was pelting down in big, cold drops.
No one was working there, although several tools had been carefully laid out.
Wryan looked around, studying the footprints in the dust. “They were working earlier.”
“Odin Thor?”
“Looks like it.”
That was worse than I had thought, because he’d already organised at least some of the divers and was probably holding an informal meeting of his own right now. “Let’s try to slide to Jerlyk’s. Don’t really want to wander through this rain.”
Wryan took my hand this time, and we dipped under the now and finally emerged on Jerlyk’s front stoop. I was shaking a bit. Even after all my practice, sometimes the little dives, where you’re trying to hit a small point in the now, were still more tiring than the long ones in a different system.
And, of course, no one had ever been able to backtime or foretime in our own system. That was one of the problems in dealing with the Frost Giants. They could and we couldn’t. They had all time, and we had the now.
LVII
MY STOMACH JITTERED as I chewed through the marinated buffalo steak. Greffin was still a superb chef, not that we saw him much, but he only had to prepare one meal. The duplicator, and an idea of Mellorie’s, made eating his creations possible at any time.
Mellorie—somehow, coming from her it made sense. She had simply asked whether the duplicator could only duplicate what was put in it, or if a duplicated pattern could be retrieved later.
I could have bashed my head on the wall. With that question, the reasons for the settings and the fact that some duplicators on Muria were linked to the lattice crystal memory banks made instant sense.
Jerlyk retrieved—stole, if you will—some blank crystals, and Wryan helped him and Mellorie in setting up a couple of master duplicators. We couldn’t steal more than two initially, because of the effort required. While setting up a closet-sized fusion plant wasn’t impossible, that was just the first step. You still had to do wiring and all the time-consuming details to put the infrastructure together.
But . . . if Wryan or I wanted to visit Mellorie’s cottage, she and Jerlyk were happy to punch a button and provide us with one of Greffin’s best meals, hot as the moment it was duplicated.
Wryan had done the honours just before we ate, insisting it was her turn.
So we sat there, at the cottage table, alone, since, with the construction of additional cottages, Kerina and Hadron had moved out and left the place to us. Derika had left even earlier.
“You’re worried about the meeting tonight?” Wryan asked.
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course. What are you going to say? It’s your meeting.”
That bothered me, too. I’d come up with the meeting because the divers and the ConFeds had to face reality together, but I had the feeling that Wryan and I were the only ones who cared about reality. So what could I say?
I took another sip of citril and another mouthful of the buffalo steak. Finally, I looked at the cabinets behind and above Wryan’s shoulder. “I guess that I’ll say what I said to Odin Thor.”
“They won’t like it.” Her tone was not critical, just gentle, reminding me of the facts.
I knew they wouldn’t like what I had to say. So we finished eating in silence.
Wryan and I arrived in the travel hall early, waiting to see who would appear. Gerloc and Amenda were already there, along with Mellorie and Jerlyk. In a corner, by himself, was Verlin. As soon as he saw me, Verlin popped out of sight.
“Off to tell everyone,” I muttered under my breath.
Sure enough, within moments, divers and even a handful of ConFed forcers and subforcers— probably those living in the ConFed quarters near the half-built tower—arrived.
Then Odin Thor marched through the door and straight toward me.
“We’re all here, Sammis. What do you plan to do about the Frost Giants?”
Everyone looked at me, and I wanted to dive right out from underneath their sight because almost every eye stared accusingly at me, as if I had created the problem. Then again, maybe that was just the way I felt.
Instead of speaking immediately, I took a long look around the room, trying not to swallow too hard as I did so.
“Well?” demanded the man who towered over me.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Colonel Odin Thor. Then I’ll tell you what I recommend we do. And then, all of you can do exactly what you please.” You will anyway, I thought, without voicing it.
Odin Thor looked momentarily puzzled, but said nothing.
Nearly a hundred people clustered around Wryan and me in the big empty hall, and it was so silent you could hear every isolated cough, every foot scuffle.
“First,” I said. “We have not developed or found a weapon which an individual diver can carry that will destroy a Frost Giant. I have found, as you all know, a number of weapons, and I am continuing to search for one which will do the job. In the meantime, I strongly suggest that we have a group of divers mount a general search of the more likely timepaths to provide a warning if another Giant or group of Giants appear to move our way.
“Right now, all we can do is avoid them. I will continue trying to find the necessary weapons— “
“Is that all?” asked Odin Thor, his voice barely below a bellow. “Is that all?”
I could sense the unrest rippling around the room. They were all looking for a miraculous solution from good young Sammis—the man who had brought them the duplicator, the gauntlets, and some idea of hope. And I didn’t have an answer.
“Is that all?” repeated Odin Thor, his voice not quite mocking.
I looked at him, and my eyes were colder than a Frost Giant. “If you want to drag out the last one or two nuclear devices buried under Westron and invite every Frost Giant in the galaxy to come and attack, be my guest. But don’t blame me.”
There was actually a moment of silence, and I seized it. “I’ve told you what I can do, and what I will do. You have to decide what you want. You know where to find me.”
And I left, diving undertime from where I stood, taking even Wryan by surprise. The damned idiots!
Wryan did not arrive until later.
“Proud of yourself?” she asked, her voice somewhere between dry and bitter.
“No. But we’ve given them damned-near everything, and we don’t have a last miracle in hand. We don’t have that many energy sources, and if we don’t stir things up, we’ll probably have enough time to find an answer. But Odin Thor doesn’t want a good answer; he wants an answer now.”
Wryan sighed, and her shoulders slumped for a moment. “Do you think your departure did any good?”
“I don’t know. I do know that staying would have been worse, because I would have lost my temper.”
Wryan looked at me. “That would have been worse, you think?”
“I don’t think you can hold people’s loyalty through force.”
“You . . .” she stopped. “Well, it’s done, and we’ll have to see.”
“What happened after I left?”
“Odin Thor delivered a long sermon on the need to bring the fight to the Frost Giants. He said that your first step was absolutely right, that we couldn’t attack an enemy if we didn’t know where they were. Then he went on to suggest that the ConFed techs would develop some ‘traps’ for any Frost Giant who attacked Query.
“Gerloc volunteered to put together the scouting patrols. And Odin Thor reminded everyone that you might just find an answer, but that the ConFeds would be ready whether or not you were successful or not.” She smiled wr
yly. “All in all, he did a masterful job of taking control without directly slamming you, and—“
“In making me look like a spoiled brat,” I finished.
“I didn’t say that.”
I sighed. “I have a lot to learn. But the whole thing just . . . I don’t know . . . why do people put up with such falseness?”
“Because, unlike you, Sammis Arloff Olon, most people cannot live without certainty and hope, and Odin Thor is good at appealing to their needs.”
She was right, and there wasn’t much I could say. I just hoped I could find a weapon or a defence before Odin Thor found a nuclear device.
LVIII
FOR A WHILE, nothing happened. Gerloc’s patrols found tracks and traces of one cluster of Giants, and the ConFeds continued to work on their trap. I was splitting my time trying to find weapons and trying to find a better way to track the Frost Giants.
If the Frost Giants descended upon Inequital from Mithrada, I could sense their undertime tracks, but actually breaking into those tracks or breaking out on Query would be blocked to me. Why?
Because, as Wryan explained it to me, according to the Laws of Time, foretiming and backtiming within your home system are not possible.
Had I, as a descendent of Query, been born on Sertis, would my home system have been Query or Sertis? Or would both be blocked to me? My gut reaction was that both systems would be blocked. Otherwise, a race with both interstellar colonies and time-diving abilities could screw up the entire universe. Then again, maybe I didn’t like that idea because it was just the sort of thing that Odin Thor liked to get involved in.
Still, as I pulled on the insulated time-diving uniform—the material represented another theft from some out-system by Kerina—I knew I had to try the chance of backtracking the Frost Giants, if only to find out where they had come from before Odin Thor did. I knew from my earlier attempts that I could see some scenes, even if I could not act. Seeing and following those tracks might give me some hint of their origin.
Wryan had left early, presumably to talk to Odin Thor and try to keep him from mounting his nuclear attack on the isolated pocket of the Frost Giants that Gerloc had found in the globular cluster out beyond Sertis. I had no love of the Frost Giants or Odin Thor, but I had yet to see anything that a diver could carry that would destroy one of them. Even after my statement at the meeting, no one seemed to understand that. Or they didn’t want to, as Wryan suggested.
After what the Frost Giants had done to Inequital, I wasn’t interested in stirring them up without any way to neutralise them or destroy them.
If I could discover that the Frost Giants were spread across a good chunk of the galaxy, that might provide us some breathing room before Odin Thor started another witch-burning crusade, just like those of the Westron past.
So I pulled on the black uniform, the boots, and the equipment belt, including the heaviest gauntlets around, one of the few technological remnants of Ydris. With just one little push, I had shoved the Ydrisians from violence and fighting into such high-tech disaster that they had destroyed each other. While I might have wished otherwise, it bad happened, and it would be difficult if not impossible for me to undo it. Besides, sadly, the divers needed the gauntlets for personal survival, and I wasn’t about to go back to the witches of Eastron days, not after my own trials in the damps.
No one else was around in the cottage as I stuffed down a high-energy breakfast. I put some additional food in the thin backpack, mostly hard bread, cheeses and dried fruit and meat. After my first diving experiences, and after my stint in the hospital, I didn’t feel comfortable without carrying some food. Then I sighed . . . and dived, letting my mind carry me sideways in time to the hilly plains that had been Inequital. While I could neither break out in the foretime or backtime on Query, nor see more than a few years past or future, there was nothing to prevent me from slipping backwards and watching for the tell-tale paths of the Frost Giants . . . or other timedivers.
As I suspected, near the present there were no traces or tracks, not the slightest “warping” of the time arrows that might indicate the pas-sage of a traveller. Perhaps two or three years in the past the undertime twisted almost violently, so violently that I had to refocus my concentration to remain there. The clutter and distortion were so great, the blue twisting in upon the red and the black and gold interleaving with each other, that I forced myself farther into the red.
Farther backtime meant fewer trails and a chance to find a Frost Giant track discrete enough to trace back to another home planet or base.
That wasn’t what I found.
Backtime of the Frost Giants, clear and thin as a razor, I found a time-line edged with crimson and vibrating with pain. Not that it was obvious, or that anyone else would have sensed the pain, because I’ve had Wryan ask about it. No one else can see more than a blur through the undertime, and no one else can sense strong emotions through the undertime. Wryan always thought it was funny that I have no empathy sense except through the time walls.
In this case, the pain was there. I almost missed it, and I had to have missed it before. But I was getting more sensitive with experience, and I was looking for that sort of thing. It wasn’t really a backtime line, but a crosstime line, running from somewhere west of Inequital to Inequital itself, and then further to the east. Toward Esterly—or Bremarlyn. Maybe farther.
My blood was as cold as if a Frost Giant had appeared before me, and, even in the suspension of the undertime I felt like my heart was racing. Mentally, I took a deep breath. Mentally, because you have no physical abilities in the undertime. Everything is suspended—itches, elation, pain.
That was why my mind wanted to make my body shudder. If that trail represented what I feared . . .
Taking a mental hold of myself, I did my best to mark the timing and place of that crimson line. Then I dived back to the cottage.
No one was there.
I ate a chyst, and paced from the workroom to the kitchen area and back again. I went outside and looked around. The overcast looked like it was building to a storm that matched what was building inside me. I could almost see my breath steaming, and I shivered, but not from the cold.
Serla looked through the shutters from next door, but she must have seen my face, because she disappeared.
I walked back inside and cut some stale brown bread and two slices of yellow cheese. Tough chewing, but it gave me something to do.
Wishing Wryan were back, I paced back down to the workroom and looked at the new duplicator and the original of the Ydrisian handgun, the one that had led to my manipulations of Ydris, and set the change-winds howling down the corridors of time. Most of the butt and the area under the barrel were taken up by energy cells.
A thought occurred to me, and, while I waited, I jotted it down on the tablet by the bench.
“Time-diving energy flows. Diverted to energy cells for weapon power?”
After all, if the power inherent in time flows could be tapped for weapons, the whole problem of energy storage would be minimised.
Even if—I dropped the thought. Either it could be done or it couldn’t.
I wished Wryan would appear, but I still didn’t want to show my face down at the Marine camp. In Odin Thor’s current mood, there was always the chance for some sort of “accident” to happen to me. He thought he still needed Wryan, but he had no use for me, now that he had the duplicator, the gauntlets, and the closet-sized fusion plant.
From the cluttered workroom I walked back to the kitchen and ate a pearapple. I looked out the window again. The thunderheads were building up to the south, and the sky was turning a purpled black.
A single jagged lightning bolt flared in the distance.
Tempted to eat something else, I deferred, mainly because my guts were feeling heavy. I still wanted to bite things, chew them. I kept pacing.
Heavy cold raindrops were striking the roof and the cottage walls and windows.
I could feel the undertime te
nsion and turned to face the open space in the middle of the kitchen where Wryan would appear. She was wearing a black diving suit.
“I don’t know which storm’s worse—the one outside or the one in-side,” commented Wryan after taking a quick look at my face.
“Inside, this time. I need your opinion. Hold my hand and dive with me. Inequital, just before the Frost Giant attack.”
“It wasn’t exactly an attack, Sammis.”
“This isn’t about the attack . . .”
She looked at my face and asked, “Can I get something to eat? Will it wait that long?”
I didn’t want to wait. I’d waited all morning, it seemed, but she looked pale, and, besides, who knew where the dive would lead? I nodded. “Anything special?”
“Just fix me some tea.”
So I turned on the burner to heat the water, while she rummaged through the cooler. Then I nibbled another corner of the hard yellow cheese.
“What is it?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure, but I have a feeling that it’s not at all good.”
“Is it the Frost Giants or Odin Thor?” She was fitting together a combination of sliced meats, greens, and cheese too thick to be properly called a sandwich.
“Something else. Very different.”
“You are upset. Just let me finish. Sit down and stop pacing. I don’t need indigestion, too.”
Perching on the edge of the chair, I watched her. Even eating that monstrous sandwich, she looked graceful. When she picked up the heavy tea mug, she could have been handling the imperial china. Yet those slender hands were as strong as mine and a lot more skilled. She’d been a medical doctor before she’d gone into the time-diving research and probably had several careers before that, although I had never had the nerve to ask her about them. She made me feel so young, so hell-fired inexperienced, at times.
I reached for the cheese.
“Are you really that hungry?” Her eyes were smiling, but caring, too, at the same time.
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