Soldiers Out of Time

by Steve White

  And besides, he thought he now had a glimpse of a way out of his predicament.

  “Well,” he said with careful casualness, “I imagine you’ll want to be getting back to General Jeffreys’ brigade.” He recalled what Hazeltine had told him. “And you‘ll want to be in time to enter Mingaora with them. After all, the Daily Telegraph will surely be interested in a story about the submission of the Swat Valley tribes.”

  Churchill’s eyes lit up. “I say, they will, won’t they? The sergeants over there—rough diamonds, you may say, but splendid chaps, really—have been trying to persuade me to stay with them. They fear for my life if I set out on my own again. But you’re absolutely right. And at any rate, I do need to get back before General Jeffreys thinks I’ve deserted. I’ll set out first thing in the morning.”

  “We’ll be sorry to see you go,” said Jason. Relieved, actually, he mentally corrected. But he knew he wasn’t entirely lying, Observer Effect or no.

  “You’re sure you want to try it, sir?” Sergeant McCready’s face was furrowed with concern, making it even uglier than usual. “I don’t think there are any hostile tribesmen left nearby, but these business competitors of Mr. Thanou’s might give you trouble.”

  In fact, the Observer Effect won’t let them, thought Jason. But of course he couldn’t say so out loud.

  “Thank you for your solicitude, Sergeant, but I’m certain I’ll be all right. And it is my duty to rejoin General Jeffreys as expeditiously as possible.” As Churchill looked down from his horse, his mouth settled into a determined look, and Jason felt a small gooseflesh-raising shock of recognition, for he had seen that exact expression. He had seen it on Churchill’s four-decades-older face, in photographs taken while Nazi bombs were falling on London and Britain stood alone against a new Dark Age, armed with little more than a badly outnumbered air force and one clear-sighted man’s unconquerable will.

  “Well, best of luck, sir. We’ve got to get back to Third Brigade.”

  “Of course you do, Sergeant. Best of luck to you as well.” As Churchill turned his horse around, his eyes met Jason’s. “Cheerio,” he said with a jaunty wave. “Perhaps we’ll see each other at Mingaora.” Then he rode off, carrying the future with him.

  “All right, you lot,” growled McCready after a moment. “Fall in, before it gets any hotter.”

  The little pick-up unit sorted itself into marching order. The three sergeants slung their rifles—Lee-Metfords, Mondrago had called them. They also had .455 Webley revolvers in holsters. The Indian sepoys carried rifles of a different kind. Jason asked Mondrago about them.

  “Martini-Henrys,” the Corsican explained in an undertone. “It’s a single-shot breechloader, rather than a repeater like the Lee-Metford. Obsolete in the British Army. But ever since the Mutiny the Brits have been careful to arm their ‘native’ troops with stuff one generation behind what the white troops get. They also keep direct control of all artillery.”

  They set out, the time travelers behind the sepoys and, bringing up the rear, the bhisti, who had filled his water sack from a nearby stream. Despite its weight and awkwardness, he wore his usual cheerful and accommodating expression. McCready detailed two of the sepoys to scout ahead.

  Jason studied the position of the sun and tried to recall the direction he and the others had taken the preceding day. As far as he could determine, they weren’t headed in the direction of the transport. But he had no idea which direction Stoneman and his slave-gathering party had taken.

  As they began to enter a defile between two rocky slopes, he joined the three sergeants at the head of the little column. “You know,” he said to McCready, despising himself for his dishonesty but having no other choice, “I’d still like to try and interest you in a little side jaunt. We could be of help to each other. If you rid us of those disagreeable competitors of ours, we could put you in the way of considerable profit.”

  “The answer’s still no. We’ve got to get back to the main body of First Brigade without delay. Besides,” McCready added with a sour side-glance at Carver, “this sounds altogether too much like one of Carver’s schemes to suit me.”

  “Now see ’ere, Mac—”

  A rifle shot, amplified and echoing in this confined space, interrupted Carver’s indignation, and one of the sepoys sank to the dust, clutching his thigh. At McCready’s roared command, they all took whatever cover was available behind boulders, as the first shot from above was followed by a fusillade of others, with a distinctly differed sound. To Jason’s ear, they sounded like the muskets he had encountered in the seventeenth century.

  “Mostly jezzails,” McCready observed.

  “But that first one was a bleedin’ Lee-Metford,” said Carver aggrievedly, unlimbering his own and firing at a half-seen target.

  “Gun-runners have been getting a few of them to the tribesmen, who’ll pay all they own for one,” said Hazeltine. The repeater somewhere on the crags above continued to fire away. The Sikhs, crouching or prone, returned fire at a slower rate with their Martini-Henrys.

  Serve you people right if your native troops are outgunned, thought Jason as a near-miss spattered his face with dust and slivers of rock. Bad luck for them, of course. He surmised that the scouts were lying in their own blood up ahead, their throats cut.

  McCready handed Jason his Webley. “D’you know how to use one of these?”

  “I think I can manage.” The revolver was a large-caliber that would doubtless kick like a mule, but at least it was a cartridge breech-loader, not one of the clumsy front-loading Colts he had used in the American Civil War. He squinted into the sun and searched for targets.

  “We’re fish in a barrel,” muttered Carver as another sepoy screamed in pain. The bhisti scrambled to the wounded man’s side, dodging bullets.

  Then, for no apparent reason, the ambushers’ fire began to slacken off, and then ceased.

  They all looked at each other blankly in the sudden silence.

  A voice from behind them shattered the silence, speaking in more or less contemporary North American English.

  “You are surrounded. Do not attempt to resist.”

  Jason stood up and turned around. Stoneman stood on the trail they had followed, flanked by four of his goons. Each held a laser carbine in one hand, with which the totally recoilless weapon could easily be used. The other hand held another weapon that Jason recognized.

  Other goons now appeared on the ridges above, where Jason was certain he knew what they had done to the Pathans.

  One of the Sikhs turned with an oath and brought up his Martini-Henry. With a bored look, Stoneman fired the neural paralyzer in his left hand. There was the ruby flash of a laser guide beam. The Sikh toppled to the dirt, unable to move a single voluntary muscle.

  With an inarticulate growl, McCready began to raise his rifle.

  “Don’t try it,” Jason told him in a low voice. “You don’t stand a chance.”

  “Wise advice, Commander Thanou,” said Stoneman in twenty-fourth-century Standard International English. “We’d rather not kill potential slaves, even though we have something of a score to settle with this unit—we had a run-in with them yesterday. But we will if we have to.”

  “Here, wot’s this?” demanded Carver.

  “Just to demonstrate . . .” Stoneman glanced at the two wounded sepoys. “More trouble than they’re worth,” he said casually. This time he used his laser carbine.

  The three sergeants stared, inarticulate with helpless fury. McCready was clearly exerting all his massive strength to hold himself in check. The sepoys were marbled in uncomprehending shock. The bhisti tried to make himself as small as possible.

  “You murdering bastard,” hissed Jason.

  “Now what kind of attitude is that? We just saved your lives. Waste not, want not, as an old saying goes. Unfortunately, we had to paralyze those few of your attackers we didn’t kill, so given their inability to move under their own power I’ve summoned the ship. It should arrive at any momen
t.”

  “I’ve had enough of this!” roared McCready, infuriated beyond caution. He glared at Jason and Stoneman alike. “Stop talking in that silly way, damn your eyes! ‘Business competitors’ my arse! Who are you? What’s this codswallop about a ‘ship’ in the middle of these bloody mountains? What—?”

  “Sahib! Sahib!” cried the bhisti, who was staring skyward with huge round eyes. “Look!” Something in his tone made McCready stop and look up. Then, one by one, they all looked up. No one spoke, as shadow engulfed them.

  The transport was sliding overhead on grav repulsion, filling the sky over the defile, blocking the sun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The sepoys moaned, and the sergeants muttered curses, as the paralyzed man was lifted up through the cargo port by tractor beam, followed by the equally paralyzed surviving Pathans. Then the transport settled onto its landing jacks on a flat expanse above the defile, and they were marched up to the still-open port, through the cargo bay and along the passageways, flanked by guards bearing nerve-lash batons. All the locals—British no less than Indian—stared with round eyes and open mouths at their surroundings. The sergeants, at least, would have heard of electric lighting, which had been invented almost two decades earlier although it still was far from widespread. But the materials—plastics and composites—were utterly unnatural to them, as were the humming, beeping, clicking background sounds.

  All at once, it became too much for one of the sepoys. With a scream, he turned and sought to fight his way back out of the belly of this flying monster. One of the goons, looking barely interested, jabbed him with his nerve-lash baton. The Sikh’s scream turned to one of agony, and he collapsed to the deck.

  “Here, you!” roared McCready indignantly, rounding on the guard. Evidently, no one else was allowed to mistreat his native troops. Before Jason could warn him to back off, the goon brushed the baton against his elbow. He went rigid but, astonishingly, didn’t scream. With a gasp, followed by a low moan through tightly clenched teeth, he sank shuddering to his knees.

  The other two sergeants went to their knees beside him. “Buck up, Mac old boy!” Carver urged, grasping the big man by the shoulders.

  “Don’t try anything,” Jason pleaded with them. “All you can do is get hurt.” Carver and Hazeltine both glared at him, but they restrained themselves from doing anything more than helping McCready to his feet. The sepoys did the same for their whimpering comrade, and the dismal procession continued.

  When the hatch opened on the slave quarters, a cacophony of female screams arose. The compartment was half-full, mostly with women and children. Taken from some nearby village, Jason thought, where the men were wiped out. Important to maintain the sex ratio among the breeding stock. But four paralyzed tribesmen had already been brought in—presumably all that had survived. The women were helping them restore their muscle control. Now, with these new arrivals—especially the white ones—the women panicked and tried to veil their faces with whatever rags they had available. One hawk-faced, black-bearded Pathan, more recovered than the others and seeming to be their leader, struggled to his feet and glared at the intended victims of his ambush. The Sikhs glared back.

  “Any brawling among the slaves will be punished with neural stimulation,” came Stoneman’s voice like a whipcrack from the hatch behind them. “Or, if that proves unavailing, with a few exemplary executions. You’d better make that clear to all, Commander Thanou. And by the way, we’ll be departing directly.” Then he was gone, and the hatch clanged shut.

  It took only an instant to make it pretty clear to the sergeants, and through the naik they made it equally clear in Urdu to the sepoys. And enough of the latter spoke a little Pushtu to get it across to their erstwhile attackers. The tension in the overcrowded compartment subsided, leaving nothing but uncomprehending despair.

  Rojas briskly examined the women, who only momentarily flinched away from her. Then she tried the water spigot. “It’s not on,” she told Jason, “and these women are nearing dehydration.” She turned to the bhisti, who had kept his water sack through it all, and spoke in her version of the current form of English. “Give the women water.”

  “Yes, memsahib.”

  The women, as Muslims, objected to his Untouchable status no more than did the Sikhs. Their acceptance of his water seemed a kind of signal, and everyone settled into a formless mass of common misery and apathy. The three sergeants sat on the deck with their backs to a bulkhead.

  Presently, there was a slight sensation of movement as the transport went aloft on grav repulsion and the photon thrusters kicked in, then it ceased. “What’s happening?” Hazeltine demanded. “We started to move, but then stopped.”

  “No. we haven’t stopped. In fact, we’re moving very fast.” Jason didn’t bother trying to explain inertial compensators. Instead, he sat crosslegged on the deck facing the sergeants and meeting their eyes. Might as well get this over with.

  “All right,” said McCready wearily. “Talk. You’ve been lying to us.”

  “Too bloody right!” exclaimed Carver. “If you’re a Canadian prospector, I’m a Bengali babu!”

  “Bad form, old man,” added Hazeltine with acid irony.

  “I’m sorry I had to lie. But if I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have believed it.”

  “Well, I’d say we’re ready to believe just about anything now,” said Hazeltine. He gave a wave that indicated the ship around them. “This is all like something out of one of Mr. Wells’ stories.”

  “So talk,” McCready repeated. “Who are you? Who are these blighters who’ve captured us? Where are you from? Where are we going on this great bloody airship?”

  “What’s happening, for God’s sake?” blurted Carver beseechingly.

  Jason turned to Hazeltine. “You mentioned H. G. Wells. Has he already written The Time Machine?”

  “Why, yes. Year before last, I believe.” Hazeltine frowned, as though he found Jason’s phraseology a trifle odd.

  “Good. Then you’ve heard of the idea of time travel.” Jason took a deep breath. “My companions and I are from the future. Nearly five centuries in the future, in fact. So are our captors—the Transhumanists, they’re called. Don’t ask me how it’s done; I couldn’t begin to explain that to you. But ask yourselves this: could this ship, or the weapons you’ve seen, have come from anywhere in your time?”

  Hazeltine’s expression was one of fascination warring with incredulity. Carver’s was simply blank. McCready’s reflected a struggle to assimilate the outrageous statement he had just heard. He was the first to find his voice.

  “See here, Mr. Thanou—or whatever your real name is—”

  “That’s one of the two things I didn’t lie about. The other is that the Transhumanists are my enemies, as well as yours. The fact that I and my party are locked up here with you should prove that.”

  “I suppose it might. But . . . if what you’re saying is true, what the devil are you doing here?”

  “Mondrago and I—that’s also his real name, by the way—are, well, police. The others with me are soldiers. We came back to this time to do our duty, which is to combat the Transhumanists. They captured us. We escaped. That was when we met you. I was hoping to come up with a scheme to take this ship, and persuade you to help us.”

  McCready seemed able to take all this in—he didn’t even remark on the fact that the soldiers included two women. But Hazeltine frowned with thought.

  “I say, if you people are mucking about in your own past, won’t you . . . well, rather mess things up for the world you came from? Including, I should think, yourselves.”

  Jason’s estimation of his intelligence went up another notch. “The possibility of doing that is strictly limited by something we call the ‘Observer Effect.’ But there are ways around it—nooks and cracks in recorded history. That’s why, for example, the Transhumanists can snatch a small, isolated unit like yours in a remote war zone like the North-West Frontier. For all anyone knows,
that Pathan ambush today wiped you out. And taking advantage of this to ‘mess things up’ for the future is exactly what the Transhumanists are trying to do. My job is to stop them.”

  The three sergeants spent a moment absorbing this. Then McCready shook his head as though to clear it of everything but immediate practicalities. “All right. Let’s say you’re telling the truth. Where are they taking us? Have they got some sort of hideout over the mountains, someplace like Kafiristan?”

  Jason had to smile. “I’m afraid we’re going a lot further than that. We’re going to another planet—another world.”

  After a moment, Hazeltine broke the silence. “Another planet . . . like Mars, you mean?”

  This, Jason reminded himself, was the era of Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell. “Not Mars. A planet you’ve never heard of, called Drakar. A planet of another sun—a star so distant that its light takes almost sixty-four years to travel here.”

  Carver’s face was a study in rejection. “Light traveling? Garn! What does that even mean?”

  “No, he’s right,” Hazeltine assured him. “Over thirty years ago, a scientist named Foucault measured the speed at which light travels. And recently, I’ve heard of some experiments by a pair of Americans named Michelson and Morley.” Then he seemed to realize the implications, and turned to Jason. “But if it’s that far away, how can we possibly get there? How long are we going to be aboard this ship?”

  “A little over three weeks.” All three sergeants gaped, although not, Jason suspected, for identical reasons. “Remember, I said we’re moving very fast. We’re going to be moving a lot faster.”