Crucible of Time

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  “Uhhl, thank you,” Antares murmured. She placed her elegant-fingered hands flat on the table, and explained, “I am what is called on my world a Thespi-Third female. I am trained as a joiner—a facilitator, you see. One who assists other individuals in achieving connection with one another. Intimate connection, sometimes.”

  Julie winced a little at that, and tried not to show it. A human jumper cable? she wondered.

  “When I make contact, I will try to demonstrate how I do what I do. If you find it uncomfortable, let me know by simply conveying the feeling to me directly.” Antares cocked her head. Julie was aware of her own fingers drumming nervously. “May I?”

  Julie swallowed, and then nodded.

  Antares’ touch was feather light on her forearm. Even that contact made her twitch like a frog’s leg electrified. She can see all of my feelings! At the same time, she felt she could see and feel everything that Antares felt. It was too much. She yelped and jerked her hand back as if she had actually received an electric shock. “Wow.”

  Jumping up from the table, she paced around the room, shaking her arm. Finally she came back, embarrassed at being so skittish.

  “Uhhl, I had only barely started,” Antares said mildly. “I was merely establishing the basic channels.”

  “Hah!” Julie laughed self-consciously. She had just been startled—all right, terrified—by the sudden feeling that she would share her innermost feelings with Antares. Not that she was sharing them, but that she could. She gulped. “I think I need some more wine.”

  “I also,” Antares said, draining her glass and rising.

  “I’ll get it. Sit tight,” Julie said, taking both glasses and crossing the room. Her hands shook a little as she held the glasses under the dispenser. Ruby liquid splashed into one glass, then the other, and she brought them back to the table. She gulped from her own as she sat. Then she forced a slow breath and took a more measured sip. “Actually, before we do this,” she said, “would you mind just telling me about your . . . relationship . . . with John?”

  Antares let her eyes drop half-closed for a moment. Her gaze seemed softer when she reopened them. “Of course, if you prefer, though I think you will understand it better when we have shared in this way.”

  “Ah-huh. You’re probably right. But still—I just want to know now,” Julie said, thinking, I don’t want to know at all. But what did I think was going to happen? Exiled across the galaxy—was he supposed to wait for me? Why should he have expected ever to see me again?

  Antares touched her throat. “I see. Yes, then. Well. John and I were at first strangers to one another. We met through a chance encounter, and then began to work in a common cause.” She told Julie how she, along with John and his friends, had fought an entity right here on Shipworld, the entity called the “boojum,” which was trying to destroy the intelligence systems on Shipworld. Through that struggle she came to know, not just John but also John’s robots, and Ik and Li-Jared. “I wouldn’t say we were exactly friends yet at the end of that battle, but we stayed together, and soon we were working in another cause.” And this time Julie heard how Antares and John and the others had been hurled together to a distant ocean world, where they found an underwater civilization endangered by something they called the Maw of the Abyss.

  “In the course of that, John and I did become friends, joined in a life-and-death struggle—and finally, we became lovers.” When Antares said the word that Julie heard as lovers, there was an inflection in the word that suggested to Julie that it was more complicated than a simple romantic or sexual liaison.

  That shouldn’t be a surprise, either, she thought with a twinge of envy.

  “And finally,” Antares continued, “as a company of friends, we—all six of us, including the two robots—” she paused and nodded across the room toward Napoleon “—plus another robot named Jeaves—journeyed together. To the Starmaker Nebula, where we met sentient stars, and encountered and fought the Mindaru, who were murdering those stars. And, maybe, we prevented a future catastrophe for your own and John’s homeworld, and probably a lot of other worlds at the same time.”

  Now I really feel small, Julie thought. A moment later, though, she remembered the things she herself had been called to do. Maybe she wasn’t that small.

  “But now I would really like to show you what all of this means to a Thespi-Third female.”

  Julie shook her head, not meaning no, just not following. “Because—?”

  “Because I think only then can you understand—” Antares paused, perhaps to search for words “—that I am not a threat to you.”

  “I never thought you were.” Julie winced at her own lie.

  “Uhhl, no?” Antares took a sip from her wine, made a face, and set the glass down again. “Then, Julie Stone, may I try again?”

  Julie swallowed and rested her arms on the table. She looked into Antares’ golden-irised gaze. “Go ahead.”

  Antares let her breath sigh out as she placed her hands on Julie’s wrists. This time, Julie held steady. After a moment, her focus was almost entirely inward, barely aware of Antares in front of her. Something opened, like a window allowing a breeze to pass through her thoughts. What’s that? she wondered. In return, she felt a sense of reassurance, and she accepted it without flinching away. Seconds passed, in quiet expectancy. Was Antares waiting for some sign from her? I’m ready, she thought, and she felt the window open wider, letting in something like the salt tang of ocean air, with hints of faraway places. She felt something loosen in her own mind.

  Let me show you. She didn’t hear those actual words, but the intent was clear. She began to feel some of what Antares had been feeling: her fears as a Thespi-Third; the loss, shame, embarrassment, guilt. Not over her care for John Bandicut, but over abandoning the rules that had governed her role as Thespi-Third from the time of her young adulthood.

  What rules are those? Julie thought the question, felt it. And felt the response from Antares:

  In a normal Thespi-Third life, with her own people, on her own world—a place Julie imagined as lush, forested, beautiful—her role was to help others form the kinds of bonds that she had later gone ahead and created with John.

  To help others, but never to have those feelings for yourself? Julie thought in wonder, and then shock.

  The response to that was affirmative, and fraught with feelings of uncertainty and shame and longing. Longing for her homeworld, from which she was exiled as surely as Julie had been from hers. Longing for freedom to make her own life, and to have her own loves—for which she had been neither created nor trained.

  Julie felt a complex mingling of currents in her own response: sympathy; anger at those who would so restrict Antares; alarm that Antares should inflict her needs on John Bandicut, and even on her, Julie. Gratitude, that Antares had made John less lonely, and been a companion and friend to him in time of danger and need. Fury, that she, Julie, had been left behind. Shame, that she harbored such unreasonable emotions.

  The window opened a little wider, revealing more detail of things Antares had hinted at before:

  She had not just wished for a life of freedom; even on her homeworld she had acted on the wish, and sampled forbidden love. The name of the one with whom she had shared was a wisp, too fleeting to catch. He had not suffered judgment as she had. Her daring was punishable by death. But her sentence had provided her escape. It was during her imprisonment, awaiting execution, that a mysterious beam of light entered the cell and took her away; and sometime during the dizzying transition that followed, she received her knowing-stones, her yaantel stones. And through a strange conveyance among the stars, she came to Shipworld, rescued from death but exiled from her own world. By whom? She wasn’t really sure.

  Just like John Bandicut. Like Julie Stone. And, as Julie understood it, like Ik and Li-Jared.

  Julie found herself almost weeping at the images—almost, but not quite. She couldn’t weep for Antares when she had her own images spilling out: h
er brief but passionate love affair with John; her encounter with the translator beneath the ice of Triton, the same translator that they’d just talked to here; and her own acquisition of stones. Up until then, she had believed that John was gone, burned up in a fiery collision with a comet. But then came her own flight with the translator, fending off an object that menaced Earth. That was followed by her own arrival here on Shipworld, alone and bewildered—only later to discover that John had been here, and she had missed him.

  (Does he know I’m here?) she wondered.

  (I don’t think so,) she heard, and was surprised to hear words from Antares. Perhaps a deeper connection was possible through touch, or perhaps with the help of the stones. (I didn’t know you were here until after he was gone, and I’m sure he would have told me. But I have no way of knowing what he may have learned since I last saw him.)

  Julie found herself sharing Antares’ pain in John’s departure.

  (We are sisters,) she heard, after a long silence. The words drifted to her so softly, she did not at first react. She blinked, and really looked at Antares, for the first time since the exchange had begun. The Thespi woman held her head at a slight angle, her gold and black eyes focused on Julie. Though her gaze seemed full of sadness, she was reaching out to Julie. (Sisters in the company. Sisters in caring for John.)

  (I . . . I don’t know,) Julie whispered silently. This was happening too fast. But there was something in Antares’ gaze, locked with hers, that conveyed more than words could, more than the images. It bound her to this alien woman, which chafed. She tried to form words in her head to explain her discomfort, but the words refused to take on life.

  Antares spoke aloud now, in a bare whisper through the air: “I feel it in my bones. And in my stones. We may have just met, but we are joined now, joined through our common experience.”

  Julie felt a strange disconnection from reality, as if she were somehow floating above all of this, looking down on it from the ceiling. It couldn’t touch her if she were floating above it; she wouldn’t have to decide what she thought or felt, or how to approach Antares. That was the safest approach.

  The illusion was short lived. Antares squeezed her wrists, signaling a change, and then slowly released the contact with Julie. The connection dissolved, like a fog dispersing. Julie’s eyes stung; had she sat unblinking all this time? She rubbed them, wondering what to ask or say. “So, now we . . . what?” She had no experience to guide her.

  Whatever Antares might have replied was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Rings-at-Need at the end of the table. He made a brushes-on-cymbal sound to get their attention.

  Julie felt as if she were struggling up from a dream. “What is it, Rings?”

  “I am sorry, but your presence has been requested,” said Rings. “I have told them that you require rest. So the request has been delayed by—” rasp “—six hours.”

  “Six hours!” Julie groaned. “You call that giving us a rest? Why the rush? What happens in six hours?” She glanced at Antares, who uttered a soft growl of agreement. “I’m tired. I need more than six hours of rest.”

  “We need you,” said Rings, “to meet with the leaders regarding a follow-up mission.”

  A chill ran through her. “What?” She shook her head, wondering if she had misheard. “You’re planning another mission already?” The idea stunned her. All she could think of was the translator’s caution not to rush into dangerous mistakes.

  Rings’ voice softened. “They were already preparing a second mission while you were in the ghoststream. Upon your return, there was great urgency to act on what you learned.”

  That made no sense to Julie, but she wasn’t going to sort it out now. “Really. Well, you know what? We need more recovery time—and sleep. And we need to confer again with the trans—with the yaantel. So I’m afraid you’re going to have to schedule the meeting a little later. All right?”

  Rings-at-Need trembled for a moment, then bobbed its head. “Understood. The team agrees to a delay.”

  “Good!”

  “Seven hours, then. I will be here to gather you then. Rest while you can.” With that, Rings-at-Need vanished.

  Seven hours? Julie thought. How am I supposed to sleep now?

  Chapter 4

  Urgent Conference

  “HRAH. WHO IS it?” Ik’s voice echoed through the silvered glass door.

  Julie stopped tapping the chime-spot on the door’s edge. “It’s Julie! Rings-at-Need is here, and he says we have to go.”

  Half a minute later the door slid open and Ik appeared. He looked ill-rested, eyes not quite wide open, a distracted expression on his face. Julie felt the way Ik looked. “It has been nowhere near seven hours,” Ik said. “Can he give me a few minutes to prepare myself, and get something to eat?”

  Rings drifted into view, ringing ominously. “I know it’s early, but you have been called to an emergency! You are needed at once.” His blank metallic-disk face angled toward Julie, catching the hallway light. “Did you not convey this to Ik?”

  “I was just—but Rings, we’re no good to you without food in our stomachs,” Julie said.

  “Nevertheless, you must hurry,” said Rings. “I will arrange for food en route.”

  ***

  Julie thought they’d be returning to the meeting room at the launch center. Instead, the four of them—Napoleon was the only one who didn’t look bedraggled and put upon—stumbled out of the rooming center and into a . . . taxi? It was a bulbous vehicle, black on the outside. It reminded Julie of the timeless London air-cabs back on Earth. Inside, there was almost enough room to spread out and eat the breakfast that had been delivered in little boxes. Rings, hovering in the center of the cabin, told them they’d be traveling this time to a different launch center.

  “Why?” Julie asked, around a too-large mouthful of something that looked like a fresh-baked donut but tasted like a green banana. “And when do we get to check back with the translator?”

  Rings echoed softly as he replied, “The why will be answered shortly, by someone better able to answer your questions. As for the yaantel, it will be back in touch when it has information to convey. Meanwhile, there’s an urgent situation and they need your help.”

  “What kind of situation?” Julie took a swallow of her coffee, just as the car accelerated into the dawn sky. Coughing, she dabbed at the front of her just-cleaned shirt, now damp with coffee. She leaned forward to yell at the driver for his jack-rabbit start. There was no driver.

  “The details I have are few,” Rings said. “But the second mission has already gone out, and they’re in trouble.”

  “Second mission! Hrah! What kind? What trouble?” Ik rasped. He was beginning, finally, to look awake.

  “Like yours,” Rings said. “But with enhanced options.”

  Julie cautiously sipped more of her coffee; it seemed bitter to her now. “What does that mean?”

  Rings turned his polished, featureless face to the side, as though gazing out the window in thought. He answered finally, in a reverberating tone that somehow conveyed, It was not my idea. “They went to the place you found, but to a later time. As I say, they are in trouble.”

  ***

  Despite their many questions, Rings insisted it was all he knew. The car began descending into twilight, dropping fast. The sky was brushed with pink and orange. Evening? They hadn’t been traveling that long; they must have flown into a different time sector. Julie could see trees and a river flash by outside now. Then they were down on a paved roadway, still moving fast. What was this place they were speeding through? It looked for all the world like a sleepy little town with dots of white lights among the trees, where events of cosmic import were a distant dream. Did people actually live here? Did they allow nothing but white lights in this place? No one was visible, and only a few other small vehicles were on the road. “What is this—Pleasantville, after everyone left?”

  Rings gave a small twang. “We are approaching a star-spann
er station.”

  “Here?”

  The Tintangle’s shiny head-disk shivered. “Economics and—” rasp “—politics. It’s sited here because—” twang “—influential people live here.”

  “I would have thought,” Ik said, “that star-spanner missions were on a higher level of politics than the local economy.”

  Rings reverberated. “We have a saying among my people: All—” rasp “—politics is local.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was a human who said that,” Julie murmured. She grabbed for a handhold as they rounded a bend and decelerated to a stop. “So . . .” They had stopped in front of an old warehouse on a river landing. A large, metal door began racking noisily up the side of the warehouse. The car pulled in, and the door reeled back down behind them. Then Rings was out of the car, gesturing with his paddle-hands for them to follow him into the dimly lit building.

  A dilapidated warehouse, home to a star-spanner? Were they keeping it secret? Napoleon clicked and said, “This reminds me of home.”

  They came to an inner set of doors, where two spindly, tripedal creatures stood motionless, holding long, straight objects that might have been weapons or drum-major staffs. Rings spoke incomprehensibly to them, and together they opened the door to let the group through.

  Bright light greeted them. They stood at the end of a long, industrial corridor that dwindled into the distance. Garish yellow ceiling lights illumined walls that looked like concrete. Revolving red lights suggested just one meaning: Urgency. Was that a universal symbol? Julie wondered. It reminded her of an amusement park ride, back on Earth. Disaster Transport.