by Диана Дуэйн
Arhu stared at him. "By making the ehhif here assassinate this Queen Victoria?"
"Indeed. It might well happen anyway, for as the two universes begin the process of exchanging energy and achieving homeostasis, that 'core event' will be one of the first things that will try to happen in your universe." Hardy blinked and looked thoughtful. "If I were in your position, I would be sure that this world's Victoria is protected from the fate you have seen befall her counterpart. Otherwise, with two universes with dead Queens, the alternate universe will gain a great entropy advantage over the other. Should both Queens die, I doubt very much whether this world would long survive … "
"Oh, great, another problem," Arhu said, rather bitterly. "And how can you be so calm about it?" "Well, for one thing, it has already happened," said Hardy mildly. "For another thing, you are the ones who will cause it not to happen … if indeed you do. How should I not be calm, when I know I am giving my advice to the right person?"
Arhu blinked and turned to Odin. "Can you translate that for me?" he said, rather helplessly.
Odin blinked too. "It made perfect sense to me," he said. "Which part of it specifically did you need translated?"
Arhu hissed softly. "Never mind."
"When I say 'it has already happened'," Hardy said, "I speak of the entire chain of events from first to last: from your arrival here to work on the gates, to your final departure. Not that I know the details of that: you will soon know them better than we ever could. But I think that, in this timeline, this universe, Queen Victoria has 'not yet' been assassinated. I would suspect that fact of being what has so far kept this timeline in place, and as yet largely undamaged … and it may also be that the difficulty you were experiencing with the oscillation of the far end of your colleague's timeslide also has to do with the unusual stability, under the circumstances, of this one. You must complete whatever consultations you have planned with speed. And at all times, the Queens must be your great care. Whatever happens, protect them."
Arhu waved his tail in agreement, and stood up. He was surprisingly wobbly on his feet. "Look … I want to thank you. I've got to get back to the others and tell them about this: as much as I can, anyway."
"Do so. Go well, young wizard: and come back again."
"He will anyway," Odin said, and poked Arhu in a friendly way with his beak, at the back of his neck.
Arhu took a swipe at him, with the claws out, and missed on purpose. It seemed wise. He liked Odin: and anyway, that beak was awfully big. "Dai," he said. "Later — "
He headed off out the gateway under the Bloody Tower with as much dignity as he could muster, while desperately wanting to fall down somewhere and go straight to sleep: and as he went out, all the stones around him were quiet … for the moment.
Rhiow opened her eyes and looked at Arhu. He had fallen asleep. With some slight difficulty, for she was stiff, she got up and stretched, and then went over to Urruah.
"We'd better call the others in," she said. "The problem's gotten much worse … "
FIVE
The whole group met again late that night in the Mint. Urruah was the last to arrive: he had been doing work on the timeslide until the last minute, having taken a while to look at Arhu's "record' in the Whispering of his flight with Odin. All the others, one by one, took time to do the same, and also to look at Rhiow's discussion with Hhumh'hri: and then, predictably, the argument began.
Fhrio, in particular, was skeptical about the ravens' suggestion regarding the version of Queen Victoria in their home timeline. "It's just more work for nothing," he said. "If she's the only thing keeping this timeline in place – and the two are congruent, mostly, in terms of timeflow – then why hasn't she been assassinated already?"
Urruah's tail was lashing already. "Because someone's prevented it already," he said, politely enough. "Probably us, or someone working with us. Either the timelines have been taken out of congruence somehow – difficult – or the attempt on the Queen's life has already failed. Again, probably because of us. We're going to have to consider timesliding someone back far enough to guard her – and then block any further slides to positions before our guard is in place, so that we can deal with the assassination attempt proper."
Fhrio spat. "It's a waste of time. One, I doubt the Powers will let us. There's too much temporal gating going on at the moment anyway. Too many ways to screw up past timelines. And secondly, it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on the Victoria who's in the 'nuclear' timeline. It's that universe that's the real threat, anyway."
"I don't know," Auhlae said. "I think Hardy might have had a point. If we – "
"Are you crazy?" Fhrio said. "We've got enough trouble already. Let's concentrate on one thing at a time."
"We may not be able to," Auhlae said. "We still have to find all the 'pastlings' and get them back into their right times: otherwise the instability of the gates is going to continue and increase all through this. We can't just drop one problem because the other seems more important all of a sudden."
"I think you're wrong," Fhrio said. "I think we have to. Even the Victoria problem will go away if we keep the first contamination, the technological one, from happening. If we could just catch that first guy with the book as he's going through the gate … "
"If you catch him," Huff said, "you'll probably catch what caused the slide in the first place. The Lone Power … in whatever form It's wearing this time out. Or you'll catch whatever poor stooge It's using … and even the stooges are likely to be trouble enough."
"Not as much trouble as the Earth dying of nuclear winter in 1888 or whenever!"
"If we could even just get the book, and keep it from crossing over … " Huff said.
Urruah lashed his tail in agreement. "I'd say there's no question that that's the point of contamination," he said. "I've checked in the Whispering. It's a very detailed volume, full of basic information on every possible kind of science. And possibly worst of all, it's full of materials science, and technical information on how to make almost everything it discusses. Manufacturing processes, temperatures, specific chemical reactions, locations of ores and chemical elements – you name it."
"That time was full of great scientific minds," Rhiow said. "They were not stupid people. Once they believed what was in that book –which they quickly would have done, once they'd tested a few of the equations in it to see what happened – they would have run wild with it. As we see they've done."
"Again, they seem to have done it somewhat selectively," Urruah said.
"But the worst thing they could have started messing with, atomics, they must have started with right away, in the late 'teens of the century, to have got as far along as they are now. It must have seemed like magic to them, that. Until they started building the necessary centrifuges and separators for the heavy-metal ores … and found that the metals did what was advertised." He sighed.
"The details are going to prove fascinating enough, I'm sure," Huff said. "But now we have to find out exactly when that incursion with the young man and the book happened, and stop it."
"How?" Arhu said.
"Backtiming, stupid," said Siffha'h.
Arhu glared at her. "Look, before you start calling names," he said, "think about it. Do you really think the Lone Power's going to just let us undo what It went to so much trouble to set up? Just like that? If you do, you're even stupider than you think I am."
"That would be fairly difficult," Siffha'h retorted, "since — "
"Stop it, Siffha'h," Auhlae said sternly. "There's enough entropy loose around here at the moment without increasing it."
"Those accesses are going to be blocked," Arhu said. "Trust me."
"Is that a seeing?" Urruah said.
"No, it's common sense," Arhu snapped, "which seems to be in short supply around here at the moment." He threw Siffha'h another annoyed look.
"Anyway," Urruah said loudly, "at the moment, there is a problem with the idea of stopping the book transfer. It is tha
t we don't yet have a definite timing or a proper set of coordinates for that transit, even with what Odin was able to show Arhu. Until we can get a timing, we can't stop the book getting back into the Victorian era: and it will take some time and work yet for us to generate a timing that we can use … even an educated guess at one. So for the time being we should concentrate on what we presently do have a chance to stop, which is the assassination."
"How close have you been able to get to that timing?" Huff said.
Urruah glanced over at Auhlae. "Eighteen sixteen," Auhlae said. "That's when the Whisperer says the volcano happened. It produced something called 'The Year Without a Summer'." The usual kind of thing: the volcano spat out a lot of high-altitude ash that produced unusually rapid cooling of the atmosphere. There were places in northern Europe where it snowed in June and July, that year. Harvests failed everywhere."
"If there was a perfect time to drop a book full of information on high technology into the pre-Victorian culture," Huff said, "I'd say that would have been it. The scientifically-oriented ehhif would have tried everything in it that they then had the materials technology for, with an eye to solving their problem … and then, when it eventually passed, they would swiftly have started constructing everything else they could, from the 'instructions'." He sighed. "I could wish they hadn't been half so clever … "
Rhiow was in agreement with him about that. "Arhu, as regards the timing of the book's arrival … could you do anything more with the ravens, do you think?"
Arhu lashed his tail "no". "Rhiow, one of the things I gathered from Odin was that they can't spend that much time during a given period in any one timeline or alternate universe. They're messengers, all right, but they have to do their work at high speed specifically because they do so much out-of-timeline work. Other universes spit them out like a mouse's gallbladder if they try to stay away from "home" too long."
She nodded. "What about vision?"
"Theirs is a little more predictable than mine," Arhu said, "but it's so different … " He shrugged his tail. "I'll go and ask them tomorrow, but I wouldn't bet on them being able to help us that much more."
Rhiow waved her tail in agreement, though reluctantly. She was still bemused by the ravens' version of vision, and wondered exactly how they were getting it. Wizards and wizardry talent among birdkind tended to vest in the predators, for some reason: possibly because they were the top of their local food chains … or possibly it was something to do with their level of intelligence. This was not something about which Rhiow had ever queried the Whisperer. She had been bemused enough, when she first became a wizard, to find that there were wizards among the houiff too, and that some of them could be as sagacious as any feline. Afterwards she stopped wondering why wizardry turned up in one species or another, and simply said Dai stiho to another wizard when she met one, whether it had wings, or fins, or two legs or four. Now, though, she started to wonder why she had never heard of raven-wizards. Or is it that I just never went looking that hard for the information? There's so much to know, and so little time …
Never mind. "All right," she said to Huff. "At least we now have a much better idea of the exact time of the assassination. We have to narrow it down further still, though."
Huff nodded. "Urruah," he said, "that's one of the other time– coordinates you're going to be trying to access when you use the timeslide next?"
"Absolutely. But there are a few other things we need to look into as well," Urruah said. "Like the small matter of the logs on the nonfunctioning gate."
Fhrio looked at Urruah sharply. "What's the matter with them?"
"They're not the way they were when we disconnected the gate from the catenary," Urruah said. The coordinates for the Illingworth access have been changed, and I don't know how, or why. Any ideas?"
Fhrio stared at Urruah as if he was out of his mind. "They can't change. You're crazy."
Urruah glanced over at Huff: Huff looked back at him, bemused. "All right then," Urruah said, "I'm crazy." Rhiow looked with great care at his tail. It was quite still. She licked her nose, twice, very fast. "But I think you should lock that gate in a stasis, Huff, and make sure no one gets at it again. If it can manage to alter itself again while it's got a stasis on it, then obviously no cause based here is at fault."
Huff stared at the floor for a moment, then looked up and said, "I'll take care of it. Rhiow – "
She looked over at him. "Our next move?" Huff said.
She was not used to being so obviously deferred to: it made her a little uncomfortable. After a moment's pause, she said, "Overall, I think at the moment that I have to agree with Fhrio. While I agree it's important to make sure that our home-timeline's Victoria is safe, the other one is in greater danger at the moment … or so it seems to me … and her assassination is what seems likeliest to trigger the derangement of our own timeline. I think we must therefore try to get into the 'altered eighteen seventy-four' timeline as quickly as we can: tomorrow, I think, since a lot of us are short on sleep at the moment. We'll try to find out exactly when the assassination was, and find out what we need to do to stop it. After that we can worry about the book, and last of all, about the stranded pastlings in our own time. Huff?"
He put his ears forward in agreement. "That makes sense to me. Let's do so."
"I am going to fuel Urruah's timeslide tomorrow," Siffha'h said, as if expecting an argument.
"Fine," said Huff. "Urruah had some questions about the catenary's behavior as a power source: this will resolve them. Auhlae and I will be doing general gate duty tomorrow, but we'll be on call if something else comes up. When should we all meet?"
"About this time?" Urruah said.
"Good enough."
The group broke up. Fhrio threw a very annoyed look at Urruah as he went out, and Urruah sat down and started washing, while the others, glancing at him, left.
Rhiow touched cheeks with Auhlae and Huff as they went out, then sat down by Urruah while he scrubbed his face. "Well, you seem to have managed to attract a lot of someone's annoyance today," she said softly, when the others, except for Arhu, were gone. "What was all that about?"
"Well, I spent a late night working with Auhlae a couple of nights ago," Urruah said, "and he seems to have taken issue with that."
"Fhrio? What business is that of his?"
"I'm not sure."
Rhiow sighed. "It doesn't take much to get him going in any case," she said. "Probably it means nothing. Are you all right, though?"
"Oh, I'm fine. It's just that – " He shrugged his tail, started washing his ears. Rhi, usually there's a certain level of good humor about these joint jobs. It seems to be missing in this one.
It's the level of stress, I'd imagine, Rhiow said. This is not your usual "joint job".
"No," he said, "I suppose not." He stopped washing, and sighed, putting his ears forward as Huff came back in. "Huff," he said, "do you want any help with that stasis?"
"No," Huff said, "I'll manage it." He sat down and looked around him a little disconsolately.
"All right then," Urruah said. "Rhi, I'll see you in the morning. Go well, Huff – " He headed out toward the cat-door in the back of the pub.
Rhiow looked at Huff for a moment, then got up and went to sit by him. "Are you all right?" she said.
"Oh – yes, I suppose so," he said, sounding a little distracted. "It's just that … I don't know … I'm not used to coping with these stress levels, and everyone around me seems to be losing their temper half the time. My team's unhappy and I don't know why, and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it … "
Rhiow put one ear back: it was a feeling she'd had occasionally. "Oh, Huff, it'll sort itself out … you'll see. It is the stress, truly: this problem isn't the kind of thing any of us would normally have to handle in the course of work. And to be suddenly thrown together with strangers, no matter how well-intentioned they are, and then try to deal with something like this … it isn't going to be easy for anyone."
She put her whiskers forward a little. "You're such an easygoing type anyway," Rhiow said, "that it must be difficult for you to deal with the frictions: they must seem kind of foolish to you."
He gave her a rueful look. "Sometimes," he said, "yes. Yes, you're right … " He sighed. "Stranger or not," he said, "it's nice to have someone around who understands. But then you're not exactly a stranger any more."
"No, of course not. When we get all this solved, Huff, you should come visit us in New York. We'll show you and your team around the gates at Grand Central … 'do the town' a little. Urruah knows some extremely good places to eat."
"I know," Huff said, sounding a little more amused. "I keep hearing about them." His whiskers were right forward now.
"I bet," Rhiow said, resigned. "Look … we've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow. I should get home. You try to get some rest, Huff, and we'll see you later on."
He waved his tail in agreement. "Go well," he said. They touched cheeks: and Rhiow went out the back, through the cat door, and down the alley, heading for the Tower Hill Underground station … thinking, a little absently, how nice it was that it no longer felt strange to rub cheeks with Huff at all …
She got home very late, by New York time, and found Iaehh in bed and snoring. As quietly as she could, Rhiow curled up with him, too tired even to care whether he would roll over on top of her in the middle of the night, as he often did while feeling for someone else who should have been in the bed, but wasn't. She sighed at the thought of what now seemed about a hundred years ago: a time when both her ehhif were here and happy, and her life managing a gating team had been relatively simple and uncomplicated … or had seemed so.
About a second later, she woke up. Oh, unfair, she thought. It was typical that, on a night when you most needed the sense of being asleep for a long time, you instead got that "cheated" feeling of having been asleep almost no time at all.
