The reference went over Dulmur’s head, but he let it go, more puzzled by the rest of what she said. “What about Gary Seven? Supervisor 194? Twentieth-century Earth wasn’t exactly on the front lines of the Temporal Cold War.”
Cyral scoffed. “Wasn’t it? Think about it. All that advanced technology suddenly showing up ahead of the curve? Cryogenics, impulse drives, artificial intelligences?”
“Reverse-engineered from the Ferengi shuttle that landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947,” Lucsly said.
“Hah! Do you really believe a mere kemocite explosion could spontaneously generate a survivable time warp? They were pawns. A deliberate act of contamination.” She had a point; after the time-displaced Quark’s Treasure had retraced its Feynman curve to 2372, the DTI’s scientists had thoroughly questioned the three Ferengi and one changeling who had been aboard the shuttle and had gone over it with a fine-tooth comb (after shelling out an extravagant amount of latinum to the owner in order to “rent” it), but had never been able to re-create the circumstances that had generated the time warp. Still, Dulmur was unsure how much credence to give to the claims of this degenerate wreck who had once been someone he respected.
“Not to mention the eugenics! Come on, you two. A secret band of geneticists comes out of nowhere with technology generations beyond the state of the art and creates a whole race of Augments less than a generation after your people discovered the double helix? How could you not see a familiar hand in that? Seriously, you call yourselves investigators?”
Dulmur exchanged a startled look with Lucsly, who asked, “Are you saying the Eugenics Wars were orchestrated by the same twenty-eighth-century faction that sponsored the Suliban Cabal?”
“Know the artist by his tools,” Cyral told them.
“Do you have proof of this?” Dulmur demanded.
“Maybe I do. But my throat’s getting a little parched . . .”
“I think you’ve had enough, Cyral—”
But Lucsly raised his hand and ordered another two drinks for her. Dulmur glared at him, but it just rolled off of Lucsly when he was like this. “If it was the Cabal’s Sponsor,” the older agent asked, “what motive did he have to interfere with pre-warp Earth?”
“Who knows? Maybe it was simply to keep Supervisor 194 occupied. Such things happen in the Cold War . . . effect preceding cause, becoming its own cause and effect . . . or effecting the causal . . . It’s a loop,” she ended up saying. “Two sides look into history, each sees the other acting somewhere in the past, so they both decide they have to go stop the other, and there’s no way to say which caused what. Or whom. Or why.” She inhaled another round. “Damn, war is stupid.”
“Is there anything more you can tell us, Cyral?” Lucsly pressed while she still retained some consciousness. “Anything about the Sponsor’s motives? Why tamper in those places and times? Why start again now? What’s his goal?”
“And what’s going on now, or in the near future,” Dulmur added, “that would draw in not only him, but other factions as well?”
“I don’t know! Damn it, you two, don’t you understand? I’m not higher echelon! I’m only level nine! I was born sixty-seven years ago. I’ve lived in this century all my life. I’ve never been uptime, never seen what happens. And they’ve never told me more than I needed to know.”
She picked up her last drink, examined it, then screamed and hurled it across the room, just barely missing the Chandir Lothario and making him squeal like a child and duck for cover, spoiling his chances with the Boslic woman he’d been hitting on. “They never told me! They knew what was going to happen to my home and they let it happen! Forced me to let it happen! Damn them! You think I would stay with them after they did that to me?” She sank back onto her stool. “Those bastards . . . they raised me, taught me everything, shepherded me through every mission, and all the time . . .”
She broke down sobbing, and Dulmur took her in his arms uneasily. “It’s so beautiful there . . . the crystal spires . . . the silver trees against the orange sky . . . those vast, extraordinary beings with their great eyes . . . do you remember Vuri? That beautiful laphound . . . he was always by my side . . . and all the time he knew . . . but I miss him so much . . .”
Dulmur comforted her as best he could, irked that Lucsly was hanging on her every rambling word in hopes of divining some deep secrets about the Aegis or the Cold War. But soon her reminiscences degenerated into mumbling too incoherent for the translators to parse. Lucsly paid Cyral’s hefty bar tab and the two agents made sure she got safely to the run-down hotel that was her only home.
“I wish we could do more for her,” Dulmur said as they left.
“I wish she could’ve told us more,” Lucsly replied.
“Well, if she was right about the Augments, if the Sponsor caused the Eugenics Wars, it rules out the idea of him being pro-Federation.”
“Does it?” Lucsly asked. “The Eugenics Wars are part of the tapestry of events that led to the Federation. Without the technological advancements they drove, would Cochrane have made his warp flight when he did?”
“That’s a reach.”
“Or maybe the Sponsor felt an augmented humanity could achieve more, sooner. Make for an even stronger Federation.”
“We’re just guessing.”
“We’re hypothesizing,” Lucsly countered. “When have we ever had more than guesswork about the motives of uptime factions?”
Dulmur held his partner’s gaze. “When have we ever needed solid facts more?”
Garcia Residence, Ealing, London
Late Season, Day 11, 743 UE (A Sunday)
18:52 UTC
When Ranjea signaled at Teresa’s door, she answered in an informal yet enticing ensemble, creatively baring large portions of her skin in a way that was fashionable in her home time but somewhat daring in the current, postwar era. “Hey, boss. What’s up?”
Since it was a typically chilly January here in Britain, Ranjea surmised that Teresa’s date would involve either beaming to a more temperate climate or simply staying indoors. Either way, he regretted having to deprive her of the experience. Once she’d shown him in and secured the door behind her, he said, “I’m afraid you and Stewart will have to cancel your date. There’s trouble at the Axis of Time.”
Teresa’s eyes widened. “Did Lirahn finally make a move?”
“Hard to say. All we know is that none of the ships that have gone in, either Vomnin or Starfleet, are coming out anymore.”
“I’ll get changed.”
Teresa’s apartment was small—apparently she felt no need for more—and she made no effort to close her bedroom door or otherwise hide herself from his view as she shed her lightweight garments. Yet nothing in her body language suggested another attempt at seduction, beyond a playful thrill of flirtation as its own end—which he accepted in the spirit intended, coming to stand in the doorway as a casual spectator. After all, it was nothing she hadn’t let him see before, so apparently she saw no reason to hide it now—an unusually mature attitude for a human. “Lovely outfit,” he teased.
“Thanks.” She threw him a quick grin, but then sobered and began donning her undergarments. “Is Titan still there? Anyone we know trapped inside?”
“No, Titan went on its way once the Asimov arrived.”
“Asimov? Appropriate name.” Naturally, they had both read The End of Eternity, and Ranjea had to agree. Perhaps whoever had assigned the ship had recognized its suitability.
“It’s a scout ship, Nova-class like the Everett. They’ve lost two shuttles, one already inside before the problem arose, one sent in to try to retrieve it.”
“Oh, don’t tell me,” Teresa said as she pulled on her trousers. “We have to go inside too. Risk getting trapped with everyone else.”
He picked up her suit jacket and held it out for her. “Hopefully it won’t come to that. But if duty requires . . .”
“Yeah, yeah.” She slipped her arms into the sleeves, smiling up at hi
m. “Don’t worry about me, boss. Leaving my life behind forever? Hell, I can do that blindfolded.”
He felt the shudder of fear run through her body. Sensing her need, he wrapped his arms around her from behind. He chose not to take her hands and offer her empathic comfort; if overdone, that could create a dependence in her. Instead he shared his love through a simple hug, which she soon relaxed into. “Thank you,” she whispered when it was done.
She reached for her hairbrush, but Ranjea placed his hand on hers and took the implement from her, leading her to her seat before the mirror. Grooming was an important bonding ritual for species with hair, an act of both sensuality and comfort, and Ranjea had studied the practice. He took satisfaction in the way Teresa relaxed as he brushed her shoulder-length yet luxurious black hair. “If we do not see home again, there will be joy in discovering our new life,” he said. “Still, I will not let you lose this home if I can help it.”
She met his eyes in the mirror, smiling tenderly. “I know you won’t, boss.” Her eyes widened. “Oh! Stewart! I’d better tell him the date’s off.”
Ranjea was sure Agent Peart would take it in stride as an occupational hazard of the job. Like many organizations doing highly classified work, the Department encouraged dating among coworkers, in order to keep the secrets contained without forcing the agents to lie to their partners or maintain barriers of secrecy. He waited as Teresa went into the other room—apparently this was something she preferred some semblance of privacy for—and let Peart know that duty had overridden their plans for the evening. She said nothing about the prospect of a more permanent separation, though, keeping it light and casual. He studied her as she came back in; she did not seem unduly stressed at the prospect of losing Peart forever. “Are things well between you and Stewart?”
“Oh, fine,” she said. She saw the look in his eyes, got his message, and shrugged. “Okay, he’s adorable, and he’s satisfying on a purely recreational level, but he’s, well, kind of flighty. And beneath the feckless charm there’s this British reserve that makes it hard to open up to him.” She smiled. “Like I can to you.”
“Still, it’s good that you’ve found physical companionship.”
“Oh, yes. Physical companionship is a very good thing, as a rule.” She winked. “Not that I have to tell you that.”
They went back out into the main room. Teresa went to retrieve her padd from its charging platform and took a moment to update her status. “So do you think whatever’s happening with the Axis is connected to the TCW?”
“Hard to say. That’s one thing we’ll have to find out.” The Department’s investigation into the prospect of a new Temporal Cold War front had somewhat fizzled due to a lack of incidents and leads. At this point, six weeks after the attempt on President Bacco’s life, things were settling back into a sense of routine, albeit with a heightened level of tension and alertness which Ranjea found bracing.
“I’d be surprised if it’s a coincidence. It seems like every major power’s had some kind of temporal incursion lately. And the Vomnin are the biggest power in the Gum Nebula.”
“True,” Ranjea said. “Which reminds me, there’s more news on the Carnelian situation. The Temporal Oversight Administration has confirmed that there are a number of discrepancies between their shielded records and their current history. A number of individuals in the records no longer exist, including at least two noted temporal researchers and a long-term planning director.”
Teresa shuddered. “Damn. So we’re living in an altered timeline now? We’re different people?”
“Not really. There are no detectable changes in our own records. The Regnancy’s very far away and has infrequent contact with us, so there’s no real impact. Yes, by now we’ve merged with our duplicates in the parallel timeline, but there was no difference between the two versions of ourselves, so by all quantum-physical and philosophical definitions, we and the Federation, and all our immediate neighbors, are the same entities we were before.”
“Weird,” Teresa said. “It doesn’t feel right, you know. Being part of two timelines at once.”
“Ahh, but remember T’Viss’s lectures on quantum Darwinism. What we think of as a linear history is more of a blur of alternatives that average out to a single timeline. More a fuzzy piece of yarn than a monofilament.”
“Yeah, but that’s on a microscopic scale, over in nanoseconds.”
“Usually, but sometimes a pair of competing states can be quasi-stable for seconds, hours, or even longer before one wins out. That’s how parallel timelines can happen at all—a duality exists long enough for a different choice to be made in one branch and produce a permanent, large-scale divergence.
“But such divergences don’t affect the entire universe simultaneously, but rather spread out from their point of origin at the speed of interaction. Which, in a universe containing tachyon fields and subspace entanglements, is quite fast even on a galactic scale. So from our perspective, it may seem the entire universe splits at once.”
“But the split is really local,” Garcia interpreted. “So . . . part of the universe can be in two or more parallel timelines at once while another part just carries on unchanged.”
“More or less. There would’ve been some subtle quantum variations—”
“Don’t. I don’t want to think about that. If you say I have an excuse to think of myself as the same continuous person after this, then I’ll take it. Don’t ruin it for me.”
Ranjea clasped her shoulder, helping her relax again. She put her hand on his briefly, then headed for the door.
Once in the corridor, she continued the conversation softly. “More temporal scientists. You think somebody’s targeting civilizations that become temporal powers in the future? Trying to unmake their enemies?”
“Quite possible.”
“Do the Carnelians have any plans to go back and fix things?” While the Regnancy of the Carnelian Throne was generally not much more advanced than the Federation, the DTI was fairly confident that they did possess time-travel technology in a form more reliable than slingshot maneuvers and unpredictable ancient artifacts.
Ranjea shook his head. “Apparently the Chief Overseer of the TOA has children in this timeline that didn’t exist in the other. Since there’s been no catastrophic change to their civilization, only the loss or alteration of certain individuals, she’s deemed it an acceptable divergence.”
“And what if she’d lost kids she’d had before?”
“We cannot know or judge that, Teresa.”
Ranjea felt her tension growing as they neared the neighborhood transporter station. “What troubles you, my friend?”
“It’s just . . . I hate leaving the Federation when I know it’s in trouble. When I might be able to help. What if we get trapped in the Axis and there’s some big temporal attack we could’ve helped with?”
“That’s another thing we cannot know. All we can do is accept where life sends us.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not that easy for me.”
He took her hand, and she instantly relaxed somewhat. “You’ve succeeded in mastering far more intense frustrations,” he reminded her. They shared a conspiratorial smile. “This is no different. Simply let go of craving for what you cannot have, and instead focus on finding the joy in what you can have. Remember how it thrilled you to explore the Axis, to study the life of eras amazingly far removed from our own? Now you can do that again.”
“Yeah . . . maybe for the rest of my life.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“No,” she said. “As long as I had my partner by my side.”
“That you will always have.”
“But what about you?” she asked, those vast eyes gazing up at him in sympathy. “If you could never be with another Deltan . . . how would you cope?”
The thought filled him with pain, which he embraced and made a part of himself like every other sensation. “I will always carry the memories of my home and loved ones with me,” h
e said. “If I am separated forever from home, then my loved ones will live on in me, and I in them.”
As the transporter whisked them away to the Capitoline, Ranjea prepared himself for the prospect of separation by immersing himself in his memories of home. From Delta to the DTI to the Axis . . . it was all one continuum. His experiences at home had led him here, and from here to wherever he would go. And so home would always be a part of him.
DOWNTIME
STARDATE 49572.0 to 50912.6
XIII
Day 44, Season of the Inner Eye, 6470 After Rebirth, Deltan Calendar A Sunday
Ilia Memorial Space Center, Yongam Island, Dhei-Lta (Delta IV)
08:52 UTC
Delta IV was not what Agent George Faunt had expected.
He’d made the standard run of hedonistic planets in his youth, more than once, and had a good basis for comparison. The Risians’ beliefs were built on generosity, so they were happy to cater to the whims of outsiders. The Argelians lived for pleasure, a reaction to the brutal puritanism of the prior civilization that had almost destroyed their world, and didn’t care whom they shared it with. And the Selkies of Pacifica—the younger, amphibious ones charged with raising their young—envied the freedom from responsibility of their fully aquatic elders and were thus prone to indulge themselves with outsiders who didn’t understand or care about the perceived impropriety of it. On all three planets, the younger Faunt had thus had no difficulty finding opportunities to . . . witness and participate in the local customs in the interest of expanding his cultural horizons.
As for Delta, of course, he’d known that participation was out of the question. But Faunt had expected the sights and sounds of the place, the activities of its inhabitants, to be similarly stimulating. Instead, what he saw around him was a populace as serene and dignified as the Vulcans, though without the emotional restraint. Certainly the men and women around him were all unusually attractive by human standards. Certainly they were attired in loose, wrapped garments that left much of their smooth bronze limbs and chests bare in the warm local weather. Certainly their lack of any body hair save eyebrows and lashes gave the impression of an even greater degree of nudity. And certainly—oh, very certainly—the wash of Deltan pheromones in the air made Faunt’s pulse race despite the inhibitor injection he’d received before planetfall. But he had not beamed down into the middle of a citywide orgy. What he saw around him was peace, dignity, serenity. The various Deltans interacted in a much more tactile way than humans generally did, showing no concept of personal space and touching each other warmly even for casual interactions; but it was relaxed and unselfconscious, like the comfortable closeness of a couple who’d been married for fifty years.
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