The astronauts stood together, talking with Weatherby, Finch, Anne and St. Germain—with the business end of a dozen muskets pointed in their direction from less than ten meters away. They had started to relay their story, but they were quickly bombarded with questions about their time, some 350 years later than the voyage of the Daedalus, as well as their modes of transportation, the “alchemy” involved in their weapons and, yes, their social structure. Somewhere in there, they discovered that Weatherby’s Earth had no North or South American continents. Frustration and amazement abounded, with the former growing more pronounced as the back-and-forth went on.
St. Germain finally interrupted. “Weatherby, we haven’t the time to dawdle here. Shoot them, bring them with us, I care not. We must go before Cagliostro completes his working!”
Stephane spoke up for the first time. “We can get you there quickly. We have our rovers. Our, um, carriages.”
Weatherby gave Stephane a hard look, regarding him carefully through narrowed eyes. The young officer was already quite disturbed that there were five of these strangely attired people present—including three women posing as officers!—but now . . . “You are French?” he asked.
“Umm . . . yes. But you see, in our time, the British and French are allies, and—whoa!”
Stephane’s explanation was immediately cut off by Weatherby, who raised his pistol toward the Frenchman, the barrel mere inches from his face. “The British and French are allies, are they?” Weatherby said calmly. “That’s perhaps even harder to believe.”
“Believe it,” Shaila said. Weatherby turned back to the women “officers,” only to see the Hindu pointing her strange-looking pistol at his face. “Let’s not make this hard, Mr. Weatherby,” she said, a hint of menace behind her voice.
The click of a dozen muskets came from behind Weatherby’s back, prompting a small smile out of him. “It shan’t be us to experience difficulty, milady,” he said. He did not lower his pistol, leaving Stephane frozen in place with his hands up, palms out, eyes saucer-wide.
Smug bastard, Shaila thought. At least Diaz had her zapper out and aimed as well. On wide-arc, they could probably stun most of them—but probably not all. Yet the situation seemed familiar, and she quickly remembered why.
“Fine,” Shaila said. She held the zapper out a moment longer before slowly lowering it. Looking Weatherby directly in the eye, she tossed the weapon to the ground. “We haven’t threatened you, Lieutenant. In fact, we saved your collective asses, which means what you’re doing right now isn’t very honorable.” She stared hard at Weatherby, whose hand wavered slightly even as he continued pointing the pistol. She stepped slowly around to stand directly between the gun and Stephane. “We’re leaving, and we’re going to that pyramid. I’m not even sure whether this Cagliostro guy is as evil as you say, but I’m going to find out, because that pyramid is the center of some bad things happening on my Mars. If you decide to start acting civilized, you can join us. If not, you can spend the rest of the goddamned day hiking. But you need to decide. Now.”
With that, she turned, grabbed Stephane by the arm, and started walking back to the rovers. Slowly, the other astronauts followed her, leaving the Daedalus crewmen stunned.
“Lieutenant,” Diaz said quietly, the comm picking up her words clearly. “Care to tell me what the hell you’re doing?”
“Winging it, ma’am,” she muttered. “Something I read in Weatherby’s journal. Ganymede.”
“Well, they are not shooting,” Stephane noted as he looked back repeatedly. “I can now say that I do not like having a gun pointed at me.”
Shaila turned around and saw Weatherby and his alchemists arguing animatedly, with their men standing around, weapons lowered.
“We should be able to at least get out of here,” Shaila said. She reached Rover Two, got in, and revved the engine. “Let’s go.”
Stephane took the passenger seat and Shaila tore off, leaving the other three to pile into their rover. She headed straight for the Daedalus contingent, covering the ground in mere seconds and skidding to a stop.
“Last chance, Lieutenant,” she said curtly, reaching down to pick up the zapper where she had thrown it. “I can take two, and the colonel’s got room for one more.”
Weatherby looked at the rover, and then at the hills in the distance, where the Martian ruins were. “And how quickly can your . . . carriages . . . cover the distance?” he asked.
“Twenty minutes, maybe less.”
Weatherby looked at St. Germain, who nodded, and at Finch, who merely shrugged. The other rover pulled up, with Diaz looking expectantly at the British officers from different centuries.
Weatherby turned to Anne. “Miss Baker, I—”
“Go,” she said simply, with something approaching kindness. “There’s but room for three, and you need both Finch and the Count with you.”
“But your safety,” Weatherby said. “Alone with the men?”
She shook her head sadly, smiling. “Have you learned nothing of me at all? After all this time?” She patted the hilt of her smallsword. “I’ll be fine. Go.”
Weatherby nodded and gave her a small smile before turning to his men. “Mr. Smythe, if you please?”
“Aye, sir?”
“I am leaving Miss Baker in your care. If any ill befalls her, no man here will go unpunished. And after that, you will deal with me. Personally.”
Smythe saluted—as did all the men.
“You know,” Shaila said, “the wreckage of the Chance is about two clicks northwest from here.”
Smythe looked at her oddly. “Clicks?”
“Sorry. About a mile, give or take. You can shelter there. We didn’t find any survivors.”
Weatherby nodded. “Make for the Chance. Set up a perimeter and defend yourselves until we return.” Finally, he turned to look at Shaila one last time. “Lt. Jain, is it?”
“That’s right.”
He nodded at St. Germain, who strode toward the second rover. “Well, if nothing else, you certainly talk like a sailor. Dr. Finch, if you please.” He motioned for Finch to take one of the back seats. “Given that you have indeed saved our . . . asses . . . we shall accept your invitation. Shall we, Lieutenant?”
Shaila gunned the motor and took off, the force of which shoved Weatherby into his seat. The officer looked over at Dr. Finch, who couldn’t stop smiling at the incongruity of it all.
“I like her,” Finch said, nodding toward Shaila as they sped off. “I think the service has held up well over the past 350 years.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Shaila said primly. “And we don’t slap people around any more either.”
Finch laughed heartily at that. “Oh, Weatherby! You wrote about that, did you? And here I was so cautious about not reading your journal, even as I wrote your eulogy!” The doctor leaned forward between Stephane and Shaila. “Of course, you thus know I am nothing but a wastrel and a terrible influence, much to my eternal pleasure and my lieutenant’s immense consternation.”
Weatherby grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back into the seat. “You have since comported yourself admirably, Doctor. I was merely frustrated at the time. And besides, that was to be a most private journal, for my father.”
“Sorry about that,” Stephane said. “When a strange book shows up on Mars dated 350 years ago, you cannot help but read, yes?”
“I suppose,” Weatherby said, nonplussed.
The next twenty minutes were spent in a barrage of questions and answers from both sides of the dimensional divide. Weatherby was particularly interested in the zappers—most likely to gauge the relative strengths of their weapons should things fall apart—while Finch was fascinated to discover that the Martian atmosphere was not normally breathable. Shaila was interested in the creature they just slew, which was apparently one of the few indigenous fauna left on Mars, and one that was keen on expanding its diet, according to Finch.
Shaila’s comm interrupted the give and take. “Diaz to Ja
in, come in.”
“Jain here, Colonel,” Shaila responded.
“Give your guests some headsets. We need to fill you in on what our experts have been chatting about.”
Shaila nodded at Stephane, who produced a pair of headsets from the rover’s emergency kit. “Gentlemen, if you would put these on, like so.” Stephane pointed to his own headset, still hooked up to his suit.
“What do these do?” Weatherby asked, doubt in his voice.
“They allow you to speak to the people in the other rover,” Shaila said.
Finch grabbed his and put it on, the wire trailing forward to the rover’s control panel. “I say, can anyone hear me?”
“I hear you,” Diaz said. “Where’s Weatherby?”
Finch grabbed the headset, took Weatherby’s hat off, and handed the headset back. “They’re asking for you.”
The lieutenant put it on carefully, as if he were wrapping some dangerous creature around his head. “Now what do I do?”
“I hear you, Lieutenant,” Diaz said. “The Count here and Dr. Greene have been sharing some information. Let’s give them a listen. And keep the chatter down. One speaker at a time. Dr. Greene?”
Greene went first. “Well, we’re finding some common ground between our modern physics and the Count’s alchemy. There are definitely some theoretical underpinnings for both that could allow for multiple universes or dimensions, as well as non-linear space-time constructions.”
“The nomenclature is different, of course,” St. Germain said, sounding put out that he had to explain himself to his lessers. “In the end, however, both alchemy and their ‘quantum physics,’ as they call it, can account for the space between spaces, and the joining of those different realms by means of Will and Work.”
“However,” Greene added, “it seems as though there needs to be folks on both sides of our respective . . . dimensions, I guess . . . in order to create a link.”
“The boxes. The EM fields,” Shaila said.
“So it would seem,” Yuna replied, still sounding somewhat doubtful, despite it all. “And the Count here believes that these aliens from Saturn placed this other person, Althotas, between our world and theirs, requiring these two particular worlds to interact in order to free him.”
“Why our worlds, then?” Weatherby asked. “Why not any other?”
“Sympathy, as Dr. Finch can tell you,” St. Germain said. “Our two worlds are somewhat similar, in that there are human beings, and something of a shared history, different as those elements may be.”
“In our 22nd century terms, these particular parallel universes may have shared a common origin at one point, and a particular event that, on the quantum level, split them apart ages ago,” Greene added.
“So there are two groups working together in two separate dimensions. How do they know to work together?” Stephane asked. “It is not as though they can talk to each other between universes, yes?”
“Yet Cagliostro has bragged throughout the Known Worlds that his ‘ascended master,’ as he calls him, has communicated with him extensively,” St. Germain said. “I believe that this entity, imprisoned between universes, can yet exert his will into both our realms, though in a limited fashion.”
“So who’s he talking to here with us?” Shaila asked. “And how?”
“We don’t know,” Greene admitted. “Given the disparities of the basic principles of time and space between our two universes, Althotas could have laid the groundwork for his reemergence on our side of the portal a very long time ago. Or last week. We just don’t know.”
“Yeah, but at some point, someone would’ve had to come to my base to lay out that damned ring,” Diaz said. She flipped a switch on her comm. “Diaz to McAuliffe, over.”
“McAuliffe. Adams here, over,” the base replied.
“Adams, I want you to pull all the suit-beacon data we have going back as long as you can—call Houston for the archives and make it a priority request. Run a search for anybody who’s been anywhere in the affected area at any time, with any kind of pattern or regularity, since the very first crew arrived—hell, since the first Mars landing. Combine that search with the radio signature I’ll be sending you in a moment. Over.”
“Colonel, that’ll take some time,” Adams said.
“So get started. Diaz out.”
Weatherby tapped Shaila on the shoulder. “Who was that?”
“Our base of operations is about 25 kilometers from here. About 15 miles, give or take. We have at least a dozen other people stationed there.”
Weatherby sat back in his seat again. “This is truly a wonder,” he said quietly, watching the Martian terrain speed by at a dizzying pace.
“I find it gratifying,” Dr. Finch replied, clapping the lieutenant on the shoulder. “Cheer up, old boy. Their wonders and our wonders may yet carry the day.”
“Yuna, you’ve been quiet,” Diaz said. “What do you think of all this?”
It was several moments before Yuna spoke. “I cannot deny that the theories put forth here have some merit,” she said tentatively. “I am, after all, sitting in a rover with the famous Count St. Germain, with my helmet off, breathing the atmosphere of Mars without ill effect. But our assumptions about what has occurred, and what this Cagliostro may be doing, are just that—assumptions. I would recommend we proceed with extreme caution, rather than shooting the place up when we arrive. An alien life form may be arriving in our universe, and I believe we should independently verify its aims before anything else.”
“Madam, you fail to appreciate the depths to which this madman will take us,” St. Germain said, his voice dripping with scorn even over the comm. “I for one will not stay my hand against him. He has stolen my life’s work, murdered several people and a great number of Venusians, and may yet have caused great tension between all of humanity and the Xan of Saturn. If you are able to subdue him with your devices, then I shall acquiesce to that. If not, I will shoot him myself.”
A cross-chatter erupted immediately over the comm, with Yuna, Greene and St. Germain arguing vociferously over the proper course of action.
“Stop it!” Diaz shouted. “All of you! That’s a goddamn order!”
St. Germain made a tentative sound, as if he were planning on further rebuttal, but stopped. Shaila guessed her commander’s don’t-you-dare look worked on 18th century alchemists as well as wayward astronauts.
“Now listen up,” Diaz said. “If we’re attacked, we fight in self-defense. But until such time as we are attacked, we make peaceful contact and try to figure out what’s going on. If Cagliostro is there doing bad things, then we take our shot. If it’s at all possible to take him alive, we do that.” The colonel paused to catch her breath. “Lt. Weatherby, as commander of the Daedalus, do you concur?”
The young lieutenant straightened in his seat. “We certainly have disparate views as to the best course of action, but this seems a workable compromise. However, should Cagliostro be an immediate threat, I say his life shall be forfeit in the name of the greater good.”
“Fine, so long as we determine that threat on scene,” Diaz said. “And again, non-lethal force whenever possible or practical. That goes for you too, Count. Besides, you’ll probably want to know where your Philosopher’s Stone is. Let’s try to keep as many people from getting dead as possible. Meantime, I’ve got one more question. What happens if Cagliostro is there right now, doing whatever mad-scientist plan he’s got going, and we stop him? Will our universes still overlap like this?”
“If his ‘working’ is the cause, then my guess is that the overlap will recede,” Greene said. “How long that will take, I don’t know. Our universes started colliding well before Cagliostro even got here, so the whole time continuum is definitely skewing non-linear. If we stop him before he finishes, the overlap could reverse itself at the same pace, or quicker. No idea.”
“Or the damage may already be done,” St. Germain said. “The rift may be permanent, although I believe it wil
l likely be confined to this area of Mars.”
“Nice,” Shaila said. “At least we can visit each other.”
They parked the rovers about a half kilometer from the pyramid itself, using the foothills of Australis Montes as cover for their approach. Lying down on one of the ridges to stay out of sight, they took in the view ahead.
And it was incredible.
Rising nearly several hundred meters from the ground, the step pyramid was perhaps one of the most ornate stone structures Shaila had ever seen. The six major tiers of the pyramid were covered in additional stonework now—staircases in the middle of each side leading to the top, flying buttresses everywhere, some sort of pillared cupola on top. The entire structure was liberally inlaid and trimmed in what appeared to be pure gold. It was a mishmash of styles, as if each of Earth’s ancient cultures had contributed something to the building, yet they all seemed to work together.
“It appears the main entrance is there, at the base where the dry canal leads up to it,” Weatherby said as he peered through his spyglass. “I see four men on guard there, pistols and cutlasses. Likely crewmen from the Chance, I’ll wager.”
“At least they won’t have reinforcements,” Finch said; the astronauts from McAuliffe had filled them in on the fate of the Chance en route.
“All right,” Diaz said, sliding back under the cover of the ridge. “I’d like to go say hi. Jain, you and Weatherby take up position over there, on that bit of high ground to the left. Yuna, take my zapper and take the Count with you over to the right, behind that boulder. Durand, you’re with me, in case I need a translator.”
“Wonderful,” Durand muttered.
Diaz whacked him on the arm with a grin. “Greene, Finch, stay out of sight.”
“So long as my lieutenant concurs,” Finch said, pointedly looking toward Weatherby.
“Agreed,” Weatherby said. “But you are taking an awful risk, Colonel. They will not be keen on negotiation.”
“It’s my job to try,” Diaz said. “Places, everyone. And remember, non-lethal attacks if need be.”
The Daedalus Incident Revised Page 40
