Time's Chariot

by Ben Jeapes

  'A man sculpted out of hairy orange peel?' Tong said. Su burst out laughing and Rico gave a polite 'a-ha-ha'.

  'English shooting party, 1910,' he said. 'The material's called tweed.'

  'Interesting.' Tong looked more closely at the alternating diagonal stripes of the weave. 'Is it modelled on fish skeletons deliberately?'

  'Oh yes, they were heavily into that sort of thing in the twentieth century,' said Rico. 'Fish-bone suits, kipper ties, they just couldn't get enough sea life.'

  'Drinks first, talk later,' Su said, with a glance at Tong.

  'Bar's that way, but let me,' Rico said. He hogged Su during working hours: it was only right to let the two of them have some time together. He took their orders and pushed off into the crowd.

  'Garron!'

  He paused as he was shouldering his way between a gorilla and a Roman centurion. Had someone . . .

  'Still interested in that computer?' The words were symbed into his mind: anonymous, impersonal, impossible to say who was speaking.

  Rico's eyebrows shot up. Of course there was a symb node here, purely for emergencies, but using it for covert activities was another matter.

  'Yes . . .?' he symbed. Nothing had been further from his mind at the party, but if he was going to be approached in this highly intriguing manner . . .

  Directions appeared in his mind. 'This way.'

  Acutely conscious that nothing looks more suspicious in a crowd than someone sidling cautiously, Rico stepped out boldly. The symbed directions led him away from the crowd, and the music dwindled to a gentle background melody. Out of the circle of lights, the plateau suddenly became very dark.

  Through some bushes, then onto the edge of a small ravine. A stream ran through it, gurgling over boulders with its rippled waters reflecting silver in the moonlight. Idyllic, Rico mused: better watch out for snogging couples.

  A bush rustled behind him and Rico turned.

  A powerful fist smashed into his stomach, and he whooped and doubled over. Patterns of light flashed in his eyes as a pair of strong hands picked him up and set him on his feet, pinning him upright in a powerful grasp.

  The sturdy form of his attacker stood before him, wrist pulled back for another blow, and Rico lashed out with his feet, catching the man on his jaw. Rico yelped as shock ran up his leg – it had been like kicking a wall and the man barely flinched. Someone standing in Rico's peripheral vision stepped forward and caught hold of Rico's leg at the knee. Another equally powerful hand seized his upper leg. Still dazed, Rico vaguely recognized what was about to happen, and rather than struggle he went limp. The hands twisted and Rico bellowed as agony exploded in his thigh. If he had tried to resist it might have snapped. As it was, he felt the wrench in his socket and knew he wouldn't be able to walk on it without attention.

  But he had other worries right now. The hands still held him, his chief aggressor still stood in front of him. Rico braced his muscles, clenched his teeth and tried to put his mind into neutral for what was about to come.

  Blow after blow sank into Rico's solar plexus. First they knocked the breath back out of him all over again, then even the pain seemed to recede into the darkness and it was just shock, shock, shock.

  'Look up,' said a harsh voice. Rico tried, but couldn't. Strong fingers twined in his hair and pulled his head up to look at the beater, and his eyes widened as he got his first clear look at the man's face in a sudden burst of moonlight. The man carefully put his hands together as if praying, then folded the fingers together, and Rico just had time to think, But it does make sense, before the man swatted the side of Rico's head with his bunched hands as if with a club.

  The supporting hands let go and Rico collapsed in a heap, a man-shaped mass of bruises and pain. His breath sobbed as he drew in vast gulps of air and fireworks exploded in his head.

  Someone grabbed his hair again and yanked his head up. He looked into the large, dark eyes of the 'tal who had led the attackers.

  'Forget 'ompu'er,' it said. 'Forget.'

  It let go and Rico let his head drop back to the ground. He watched as the 'tal walked over to a tree, reached up, snapped off a branch and walked purposefully back to Rico.

  Oh, great, Rico thought. But the 'tal just dropped it on him.

  ''Ou need it,' he said. He turned round and walked away without any further comment, followed by his two companions. Rico watched them go, then with the last of his strength tried to push himself up.

  He couldn't do it. He fell back, buried his face in the grass and the smells of the earth and let himself succumb to the roaring dark inside his head.

  'Of course, Hossein was in Fieldwork but it wasn't really for him,' Ekat Hoon said. They had wandered to the edge of the plateau, where the gentle shimmer of a forcefield kept them from plunging down to what would be the floor of the Mediterranean, and the waterfall's roar was oddly muted into a pleasant background thunder. The drinks served by Francis had been judged unpalatable and Hossein Asaldra had been dispatched to find replacements. Marje was amused at the fairly apparent overtones in their relationship: as far as she could see, formal, stand-offish Hossein Asaldra was – what was the Fossil Age term she had heard once? – chicken-bitten, or something like that. Hoon was happy to do the talking for both of them. 'So, have you ever been upstream, Commissioner?' Hoon said. 'Apart from occasions like this?'

  'Not me,' said Marje. 'And do call me Marje, Ekat.'

  Hoon acknowledged the permission with a gracious nod. 'I'd be there like a shot, given the chance,' she said. 'There's so much I'd like to see.'

  'Whatever you want to see, there's probably a correspondent's report listed for it,' Marje said.

  'Not the same as first-hand experience, though, is it?'

  'Not in the least,' Marje agreed. From the slight nod of Hoon's head she wondered if she had just passed some kind of test in the woman's mind. 'But perhaps I'm just boring and have no spirit of adventure. My field is psychology and we have all the information we're likely to need on that here in the present.'

  'That's not just your preparation talking, then,' Hoon said. Part of the social preparation that every child had was to make people comfortable with living in the modern world, and that meant disinclining them to live anywhere else. The higher up the ladder one rose, the less preparation was required and the more one's thoughts could roam.

  'No. I'd know if it was.' Hoon raised a sceptic eyebrow. 'I would,' Marje insisted. 'You have to know your own mind if you're going to study other people's.'

  'Good point.'

  'So what in our history would you like to see?' Marje said.

  Hoon looked thoughtful. 'Where to start?' she said. 'Let's see. I'd like to visit the Neanderthals and learn about their civilization. I'd like to watch the first humans arrive in North America. I'd like to talk to Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and clear up a couple of points. I'd like to witness the building of Stonehenge and the Nazca Lines, find out what they're for—'

  'We know all that. I've seen the correspondents' reports.'

  'I know, I know.' Hoon gave a wry smile. 'And you don't want the past overrun with romantics like me. But that's what I'd like. And maybe—'

  'Maybe?'

  'No.' Hoon shook her head. 'You wouldn't approve.'

  'No, go on,' Marje said, intrigued. 'Please.'

  'Marje, there is such potential in the Home Time and we don't use it. Instead we let the space nations crowd us in on Earth when there's room for us all out there. Why not send ships back hundreds, thousands of years? Colonize space before the space nations get there?'

  Marje knew how rude it would be to express her immediate reaction and so she kept quiet, and Hoon carried on regardless. 'And maybe . . . correct a few things. This and that. It wouldn't affect us here, would it? This is the Home Time. All the streams lead here. But if you could prevent all the wars, all the plagues, all the famines of history, think how many lives you would be saving.'

  Marje sighed. This woman was on the Oversight Commi
ttee: she was one of the people responsible for keeping College and World Executive in touch. 'And all the people who lived instead never would,' she said. 'We don't play God, Ekat. Have you heard of Jean Morbern?'

  'Of course I have.'

  'He left us with a set of ethics—' said Marje.

  'And an artificial intelligence that makes damn sure you keep to them. AIs can be overridden, Marje. Do you want a fancified computer telling you what to do?'

  'If I disagreed with it, no, I wouldn't. But the Register isn't a fancified computer and I agree with every detail of Morbern's Code.' Marje heard her voice growing cold but made no effort to change it. 'It's not just that all College personnel are sworn to follow it. You have to realize, Jean Morbern was horrified when he realized what . . . what godlike things he had done. Creating the timestreams meant creating millions, billions more people, all individuals, all with rights. He didn't mean to create the streams – they just . . . happened when he made his first visits upstream, before he'd got the hang of probability shielding. He felt he had no right to create them and therefore no right to uncreate either.'

  'And you're with him, Marje?' Hoon said quietly.

  'I'm afraid I am,' Marje said. 'I'm surprised Hossein didn't tell you all this before,' she added.

  Hoon paused, then smiled and bowed. 'I was out of order and I apologize. Can we start again?'

  If Hoon was offering an olive branch, that was fine by Marje. 'Let's do that,' she said with a smile.

  'Ah, here comes Hossein . . .'

  Marje turned to look, and winced at a sudden crash. All heads turned in that direction. Asaldra had been worming his way towards them with a tray in one hand. Someone had stepped backwards at the wrong moment and the tray had gone flying. The man who had bumped into the tray staggered, arms flailing about. His foot came down on one of the fallen glasses and it broke into several fragments.

  'Don't touch it!' the man shouted, panicked. He stared down at the fragments and from the way his eyes were fixed on the broken glass, Marje knew that his symb was pumping in screaming, lurid images of blood in front of his eyes whenever he thought of picking it up. Antipathy to sharp edges was something that everyone had in their preparation, but lower classifications like this man had it more than most. 'I–I'll call a drone . . .' he said.

  'Oh, please,' said Asaldra. He knelt down and carefully picked up the fragments, placing them in his cupped left hand. The man recoiled as he straightened up. Asaldra looked over at the two women, shrugged and pulled a face, and turned to go back to the bar with his unwelcome cargo. The crowd parted in front of him.

  Conversation gradually picked up once more, now that the crisis was over and the unpleasant reality of sharp edges that could hurt someone had been removed.

  'Social preparation,' said Hoon dryly. 'Where would we be without it?'

  Marje took a breath. 'It enables twenty billion human beings to live together without harming each other, and to me that justifies a lot.' She wondered who had had the bright idea of using real glass in the glasses. It was taking the love of anachronism too far.

  'Even to the point of not being able to stand the thought of broken glass? Come on, Marje! Our race evolved using sharp edges. Why do we force-feed our children from birth onwards with the idea that that sharp edges are bad?'

  'What's your point?'

  'My point is that any other society in history would have called social preparation brainwashing, a tool to keep the people down. Can you imagine the Directorate with social preparation?'

  This was going too far. Comparing the Home Time to the twenty-second century's most unpleasant regime was too much.

  'But we're not the Directorate,' Marje said with a brittle smile.

  'No, but we might very well become that, when the Home Time ends in twenty-seven years time and the World Executive realizes it has twenty billion people to keep happy and nothing to do it with. Oh, we'll keep cruising on momentum for a century or so, living off the memories which the College gave us . . .'

  'Social Studies is working on that,' Marje said. 'The end of the Home Time won't take anyone by surprise, Ekat.'

  'It certainly won't,' Hoon agreed. 'You can depend on that.'

  'Rico?' Su paused on the edge of the ravine, judged that Rico wasn't down there, and looked around. 'Where are you?'

  'Over here,' Rico said faintly. He had dragged himself to a tree and was sitting on the ground with his back to it. He had tried to use the symb channel to get help but it had shut down. Presumably it had been open just long enough to entice him.

  Su gasped. The massive bruise on one side of his face was clear in the moonlight.

  'What happened to you?'

  'Walked into a door.' He held up a hand. 'Help me up, Su.'

  'There aren't any doors here.'

  'I didn't think so either, but it's –' Rico hissed in pain as he slowly rose to the vertical, Su taking his weight on one side and the crutch on the other – 'amazing what you find if you look hard enough.'

  'Rico, you went off for drinks, and that was the last we saw of you, and now . . .'

  'I'll be OK after half an hour in a healer,' Rico said. 'Just help me get to the recall area.' Slowly, they began to hobble off, and Rico shut his ears to Su's protests while his mind worked over what he had been through.

  Yes, it made sense. Low classification: might be able to do it, but social preparation would prevent it. High classification: less social preparation, but no idea how to do it.

  But high classification, and control over a group of very strong 'tals with no social preparation at all: all of a sudden, all sorts of things were possible. And the only high classifications like that . . .

  . . . worked for the College.

  'By the way,' he said through his teeth, interrupting whatever Su had been saying, 'my theory makes sense now.'

  'What theory?' Su demanded angrily.

  'The one I tested at Daiho's place, remember? I worked out that if a body was thrown far enough then the agravs wouldn't pick it up. But I couldn't work out how the body could be thrown that far.'

  'And?'

  'I've just realized what could have done it.' He gasped as his injured leg banged into a rock. 'Still don't know who, though. They tried to put me off, Su.'

  'And did they?' Su said, though there was no hope in her tone.

  'In your dreams.'

  They were through the trees, now. Tong came towards them, stopped, gaped, then hurried forward to lend his assistance, cautioned only with a stern 'don't ask' from his wife.

  They tried to skirt the crowd to get to the terrace where the recall area was, but at least one member of the crowd saw them and came forward. Rico's heart sank as the familiar and very unwanted toad-like figure of Supervisor Marlici approached, silhouetted against the lights.

  'Op Garron!' he said, with a smile like a shark greeting someone else's long-lost relative. 'How glad I am I found you.'

  Nine

  Matthew Carradine, the founder, Managing Director and President of BioCarr, had started pacing around his office for the third time.

  The office was a beautifully decorated room in the magnificent seventeenth-century mansion that he had bought when he inherited his parents' fortune, at the end of the first decade of the millennium. It had a breathtaking view of the park outside. It was decorated with exquisite taste, product of the best interior designers his considerable money could buy. The perfect base from which to put all that money to even better use and build up a fortune of his own.

  As he had done. He loved this building, but today it just bored him.

  His PA, a quiet and inoffensive man called Alan, was turning into an irritating nag and had been snapped at the last time he put his head around the door to offer some tea. And when a call had finally come through two minutes ago, it hadn't been the call – it had been Alan again, with a mundane, routine matter that couldn't wait. The poor man had barely escaped with his life.

  'Where are they?' Carradine mutte
red. 'Where are they?'

  It was the moment he had been waiting for ever since the visitor, the stranger, had appeared and stood in front of him – just there, between the table and the drinks cabinet – and outlined his plans. And then he had put down what he called 'a deposit'. And what a deposit! Information decades, maybe centuries ahead of what BioCarr – or, more importantly, BioCarr's rivals – could offer. No doubt it was passé in – what had he called it? – the Home Time, which lay who knew how far in the future; but here and now in good old 2022, the stuff was so hot it was molten.

  A day later, once the information had been verified and Carradine was still coming to terms with the reality of the gold seam he had struck, the man had come back and made the deal. All this in return for certain facilities and a bit of privacy.

  Carradine stopped pacing and glanced at his watch. It was 16:07, and the arranged time had been 16.00. Had something gone wrong? Had the Home Timers changed their mind? Had they all been taken – he swallowed, it was a distinct possibility – for a ride?

  The call tone sounded and he threw himself at his desk. Then he checked himself and carefully sat down, ran his hands back through his hair and pulled the display towards him. Alan looked out at him, any resentment from his previous tongue-lashing well hidden. Alan was like that. Quiet, reserved, unbelievably discreet, almost ageless. Carradine had suspicions about the reasons for his singleness which he kept to himself.

  This once, Alan was indulging in a small smile.

  'I've got Holliss at the hotel for you, Matthew,' he said. 'They've arrived.'

  'Thank God! I mean, good. Good.' Carradine had to keep his arms flat on the desk in front of him, rather than hug himself with glee, which was his instinct. It was working. It could work. 'Put her through.'

  Edith Holliss looked out at him, large glasses taking up most of the image. They irritated him, as they always did. Why did an employee of BioCarr, which stood for progress and technology, insist on such anachronisms when perfectly good vision correction was available to all for a small fee?