Time's Chariot

by Ben Jeapes

After a brief spell in decon the light led them out of the hall and into the corridors and chambers of the College. Rico had been wondering if there would be some kind of red carpet laid out for the returning lost Field Ops, but apparently not. No one even gave them a second glance. Maybe the enquiry into their non-return had judged them incompetent and an embarrassment to the College. Maybe, under the new version of history, they were the villains who had obstructed Asaldra in his noble work and they had been struck off the rolls.

  'See, the conquering hero comes,' he muttered. The layout of the place was the same, the cut of the clothes slightly different, not one face recognizable. And the whole place was strangely quiet, subdued, as Rico thought might be expected on the last day of the Home Time.

  They came to a carryfield and were whisked away, with the light following. Rico suddenly had a suspicion what was happening.

  It'll be a party, he thought, with a grin. They're laying on a welcome-home do. Maybe not everyone, but Su's family are bound to be there, maybe her grandkids too . . .

  Except that they were not heading in the direction he would have expected.

  'We're going to the Outsider's Quarter?' he said.

  'We're going to the Appalachian Consulate, Mr Garron. All the regular College accommodation is booked up for today.'

  'I haven't been having good experiences with Appalachians recently, you know,' said Rico.

  The voice was amused. 'I know.'

  They came to the barriers of the consulate, where Rico and Su had to get off the carryfield to walk. The light beamed a clearance code at the guards and they let the Ops through.

  'Almost there,' said the light. They stopped outside an apartment and the light faded into nothingness, just as the door morphed open.

  The apartment held a man and a woman, coming towards them. Not a party, then, Rico thought, and failed to keep the disappointment off his face.

  The man was smiling broadly. 'Come in, please.' The voice was the same as the one that had led Rico here. 'How do you do, Op Zo. We met briefly, you may remember. Op Garron?' He looked Rico up and down. 'I remembered you as taller and older, but then I was slightly smaller and a lot younger.'

  Rico studied the man in return. Dark hair, maybe a touch of grey, early to mid-forties . . .

  The penny dropped as they stepped into the apartment and the door closed behind them.

  'You're Jonjo!'

  'Jontan Baiget, Mr Garron.' Jontan smiled and held out his hand. 'And this is Sarai.'

  'Hello.' Sarai smiled broadly and held out her hand. 'I never got a chance to thank you.'

  Jontan said, 'The Register asked us – well, ordered, but we were happy to oblige – to be here to meet you. He thought you'd like some familiar faces.'

  'I never thanked you either, Op Zo,' Sarai said. Her smile was still wide and genuine as she held her hand out to Su. 'I can still remember—'

  'For God's sake!' It was almost a scream and it made Rico, Jontan and Sarai jump. Su flung herself away from Rico and stood facing them. Her hands were balled up into fists. They quivered with emotion, her whole body shook and it looked as if she was about to throw herself at one of them and pound him to pieces. 'Will you stop nattering and tell me where my family are?'

  'Your family?' Jontan seemed baffled. 'I've no idea, but I could find out, if you like.'

  'You mean, the Register didn't tell you?' Rico said. Sarai and Jontan were completely nonplussed.

  'But why should it?' Sarai said.

  'Well, you know . . .' Rico stepped over to Su and gently took hold of her shaking wrists. He rubbed them together but didn't take his eyes off Jontan. 'She might have appreciated the information. She's got a lot of catching up to do with them, you know. Twenty-seven years and all that.'

  'Catching up?' Jontan looked at Su in surprise. 'But, I mean, you go back, don't you? They won't miss you for a moment. Everyone knows that.'

  'To use a complex legal term,' Jontan called over the hiss of the water, 'they tried to buy us off. And to use another, we took the money and ran.' He was sitting in a comfortable chair just inside the door of the bathroom. Su and Sarai were in the next-door suite, where Su had been promised an identical freshening up and debriefing.

  'And you're still together,' Rico said as he scrubbed under his arms. 'I wouldn't have guessed.'

  'Sorry?'

  'Still together.' Rico raised his voice to get it through the shower partition. 'Ah, this is good. This is good.'

  'Not still together, we got back that way. I mean, yeah, we were kids in love, but a few weeks upstream wasn't enough to make us spend the rest of our lives together. But then the Patrician's Guild paid off our service to Holmberg-Chabani-Scott to dissuade us from pressing charges of abduction against them, and Holmberg-Chabani-Scott gave us a farm each for the same reason.'

  'Excuse me?' Rico said. 'They gave two kids a farm each?'

  'Legally we were post-minors – young enough to still be under adult protection, old enough to own a business. But yes, sure, they were hoping we'd go under in five minutes flat, so we'd end up working for them again and they could say, well, they'd done their best for us.'

  'What went right?'

  'Sarai.' Even with the slightly raised voice and the partition, there was no disguising the pride and love in Jontan's voice. 'Me, I'm a biotechnician, always will be, but she's got a business head. She suggested combining the farms, which we did – I mean, I can read a balance sheet and I know when I'm about to go broke – and one thing led to another and, well, we fell in love all over again, as adults. We're due to be grandparents in four months time and the farm's booming. We'll never be Holmberg-Chabani-Scott, but who needs it?'

  'Congratulations,' Rico said. 'Tell it to stop the water and turn on the air, will you?' he added – God, he missed symb – and Jontan obliged. 'Bit warmer . . . bit more . . . that's it.' He turned slowly in the flow of perfumed, warm air. 'And now, I gather Asaldra's the big hero?'

  'And how. They turned on the PR the moment Op Zo got back. She was proof it worked and he became like a posthumous hero, except that he wasn't actually dead. Ekat Hoon's still on the Oversight Committee for the College, and she'll have worked out a nice patrician post for him in the new order.'

  'And the new order is?'

  'Much the same as the old one,' Jontan said with a lopsided grin. 'A few different names in the top posts, but for the rest of us, life goes on. Except that transference is going to be a lot less regulated than before and Hoon's lot are full of plans for using it against the space nations. They're popular.'

  'And Daiho? I mean, he did the actual work,' said Rico.

  'Mr Daiho committed murder,' said a new voice. Rico popped his head around the partition in surprise. The Register's eidolon stood in the doorway to the bathroom. 'Thank you for your help, Mr Baiget, but would you mind leaving us alone now? Op Garron, your clothes have arrived. Get dressed and I'll brief you fully.'

  'No!' a fully-dressed Rico exclaimed. He strode around the apartment and kicked the wall on an impulse. The Register's eidolon sat in a chair and watched him with a faint, patient smile. 'OK, so he worked out how to rekindle the Home Time, but that's not relevant! It did not excuse murder, and I mean, murder! That clone could think, it was self-aware, it had brain patterns . . . it might only have had a mind like a baby but it was still . . .'

  'You're not saying anything that didn't come out at the trial,' the Register said. 'In fact, most of what you're saying was said by Mr Daiho himself.'

  'But, murder?' Rico said. 'He must have known the penalty for that! I mean, it's complete brainwipe and new personality and all that, or . . .' He stopped and his eyes went wide. 'Oh, you're kidding!' he said.

  'Or induction into the correspondents programme,' the Register finished for him, with a nod. 'The Commissioner was an ardent student of ancient philosophy. He was actually looking forward to his sentence.'

  Looking forward . . . It all clicked in Rico's mind.

  'That correspondent?' he
said. He thought back to the battered body remains on the floor of the transference chamber, and sat down heavily in a chair and put his head in his hands. Then he looked up at the Register. 'But that doesn't work. That correspondent – Alan – was sent back by him, so how could he have been him?'

  'Actually, Commissioner Daiho didn't send RC/1029 back,' said the Register. 'When he first began to make plans, that correspondent was suggested to him by someone already in the know. In fact, if you will, the ringleader of the plot.'

  'But who could . . .' Rico felt his insides freeze. Here he was, in a sealed apartment, unable to symb, completely at the mercy of all the technology this advanced artificial personality had at its command. 'You?' he whispered.

  'Me,' the Register said. 'And now you are no doubt going to tell me why it couldn't have been.'

  'It couldn't have . . .' Rico snapped, and bit his tongue. 'OK. He was sent back by your future self. How did your past self know?'

  'I've been in touch with myself for a long time. It's only an arbitrary decision on my part which keeps personnel from transferring within the Home Time. I could send people if I so chose and I can certainly send myself messages without anyone knowing. So I knew, and when the Commissioner asked me for a suitable correspondent, I gave him that one.'

  'But why?' Rico said.

  'I wanted to keep the Home Time going.'

  'But Morbern didn't!' Rico was close to shouting.

  'He expected the Home Time to lapse at the expected time, and he set you up to make sure things happened as he wanted!' Rico could feel tenets he had held since childhood crumbling under him. It was frightening. It was also, strangely, exhilarating.

  'Exactly. I was set up as a mirror of Morbern's own personality, complete with his own wishes and desires. But that was four hundred years ago, Mr Garron. People can change over just a few years. How much more do you think they could change over four centuries? If Jean Morbern had lived that long, I expect he would have changed too. He'd have realized that the Home Time had to keep going. There are billions of people now alive who depend on it. It's not ideal, but the fact is, society now is so stagnant it will just collapse into chaos without the constant input from upstream.'

  Rico glared at the former icon of his life. 'And was it worth it?' he muttered.

  'You tell me. We're going to have a whole new Home Time, Mr Garron, and this will be very different from the last one. The last one was sprung on the world suddenly and no one expected it. This has been planned for the last twenty-seven years. Morbern's Code is to be revised, made more flexible. I was designed to expire when the Home Time expires but I'll be cloning my intelligence so there'll be something very like me still around, only it will work for the College, not run it. Above all, of course, we'll have transference again, and there'll be an opening for you – an experienced Specific. You could have your old job back.'

  'Keep talking,' said Rico.

  'Or,' the Register said, 'I could send you home with Op Zo.'

  'Home?' Rico murmured. He was already getting used to the idea of starting a new life twenty-seven years on. Enjoying the fact that most of the enemies he had made in his career would be at, or approaching, retirement. The same statute of limitations that meant Asaldra could no longer be held responsible for events twenty-seven years ago also applied to Rico. And the future that the Register painted of the new Home Time was rosy, even if it did have Hossein Asaldra as a hero in it. To his surprise, he was already adjusting to the new situation.

  But even so . . . home.

  'But,' he said, 'I thought we'd already established that Su goes home, I don't.'

  'Su goes home,' the Register agreed. 'She delivers the message to my earlier self that everything has worked out, and she picks up her life again without a blip. You, if you choose to go back, will be facing a tribunal and a lawsuit from Mr Scott's friends and relatives. However, the old Register would certainly offer you a new identity if you chose to return. So you see, it may just be that you go back too and Jontan Baiget hasn't heard of you.'

  'You know, don't you?' Rico said. 'You know what I'm going to do.'

  'I do not. I have deliberately purged all knowledge of your actions from my memory. You have to act of your own free will.'

  'You know about Su, though.'

  'Su's choice is a forgone conclusion. What is there for her here? Her family are back there.'

  Home . . .

  'It's a tough one, isn't it?' he said, but he already knew what he wanted.

  The transference hall had been packed with people earlier. Now it was empty – emptier than Rico had ever known. The thirty or forty levels – Rico could never remember the exact number – were silent. No one was entering or leaving the Home Time; no technicians were working on the chambers. His footsteps rang on the metal grid beneath him.

  'It's almost over,' said Jontan. His services had been retained for just a while longer – he could symb, Rico still couldn't – and he was tuned to a news channel inside his head. Even he had picked up on the significance of what was going on. 'This is amazing. They're actually counting down to the end of an era.'

  'Uh huh,' Rico said. The back of his neck still tingled with the recent injection of the symb seeds that were now regrowing their network inside his head.

  They came to a chamber, standing with its doors open, and Jontan peered inside with interest. He had only seen one of these twice in his life, and not recently.

  'You remember it as bigger and older?' Rico said.

  Jontan smiled. 'Just bigger.' Then his smile faded. 'This is it. They've reached ten.'

  He stepped back slightly and looked around to take in as much of the hall as he could.

  '. . . Seven, six, five . . .'

  He stopped speaking out loud but mouthed the words silently. And then he reached one.

  Something stopped. Rico frowned and looked around. Something had been there, like the quiet, unnoticed hum of air conditioning at night, or a vibration through the soles of his feet, filtered out by the brain . . . and when it had stopped it had made just as much an impact as a sudden bang.

  'It's over,' Jontan said quietly, and Rico realized what it was. He reached out and put his hand gently against the side of the chamber. It was still, cold steel. No hum, no energy. Every chamber in the transference hall was dead. Deep beneath the College, Morbern's singularity had collapsed into nothing and the Home Time was no more.

  'Now what?' he said, wishing those symb seeds would grow back more quickly. Jontan's eyes were unfocused as he followed the images inside his head.

  'A lot of meaningless chatter from the commentators – right – here it comes. Another countdown. They're about to trigger the new singularity. Um, nine, eight . . .'

  Again, at five he started counting silently, and at one . . .

  The noise didn't just come back like that. It piled up over a couple of seconds, like being inside a vast machine that had just started up. But it was back, in a matter of seconds, to the familiar subliminal rumble Rico had always known.

  Jontan's face was one huge, delighted smile. 'It worked!' he said. 'Down in Control, it's a carnival. They're shouting, dancing, whooping . . .' His eyes fixed on something behind Rico and his expression turned more thoughtful.

  Rico looked round and saw Su and Sarai were coming towards them. Jontan stepped forward to intercept his wife and together they hung back slightly, so Su and Rico met up again on their own.

  'Well . . .' Su said. She was smiling bravely but it didn't quite work. 'The Register told me.'

  'No hard feelings?' They hugged.

  'I understand. There's nothing for you back there.'

  Rico hugged her more tightly. 'There's you, Su.'

  'Oh, stop it,' Su mumbled into his shoulder. 'I'd never forgive you if you blew this opportunity and you know it.'

  'And I'd never forgive you if you stayed just for me.'

  'Oh, yeah, right, Garron. Don't flatter yourself.'

  They stood close together with
out speaking for a moment longer.

  'The co-ordinates are set,' said a familiar voice. The Register's eidolon had appeared next to the chamber. No, not the Register's eidolon, Rico reminded himself: the eidolon of the new Register, outwardly identical to the old but with important differences in what it could now do. 'Are you ready, Op Zo?'

  'As I'll ever be,' Su said. She pushed herself gently away from Rico, then reached out once more to touch him. She smiled again, turned and walked into the chamber. The doors began to swing shut.

  'Good luck,' she called.

  'I'll manage.' Rico knew his own smile was twisted.

  'Give Asaldra a hard time.'

  'Why do you think I'm staying?'

  'I'll miss you,' Su called, and then the doors finally closed.

  Rico stepped back and looked at the transference chamber. He felt a sudden surge of irritation at its smug, shiny, spherical complacency. The chambers just sat there while Field Ops came and went and technicians tended to their every need. They swallowed people up and, in their own good time, returned them. It was as if Su was held in one of them, and all it had to do was open its doors . . .

  'Mr Garron?' said Sarai behind him. He turned round. She and Jontan were still standing a discreet distance away, arms around each other's waists. And more people were approaching, borne by a carryfield.

  'We called some people, once we learned you were staying . . .' Jontan said, but Rico had already twigged. The banner saying 'Welcome Rico' was one clue. And the faces.

  Tong, Su's husband – hair shorter and greyer than it had been. A man and woman in their thirties, with a couple of toddlers – grief, that must be Su's descendants – and, at the forefront . . .

  They stood face to face as, for Rico, they had just been doing, each savouring the sight of the other, drinking it in. Then:

  'Those twenty-seven years have been good to you,' he said.

  'Hello, Rico,' she said, and for the second time in a couple of minutes and twenty-seven years, Su Zo walked into his arms.

  Author's Note

  The Marconi Monument does exist, exactly as described in Chapter 11, and Daiho is entirely correct about its significance in human affairs. There is also a hotel at the location depicted in the book, and I leave its identity as an exercise for readers with an interest in telecommunications, the directions given in Chapter 11 and a handy guide to the Lizard peninsula. However, the real-life hotel and its staff bear no resemblance at all to their fictional counterparts.