GODS OF TIME

by DG SIDNA

  The way he says this last part gives me pause.

  Soolin does not back down. "So you would condemn us for our mortal failings? You believe you have that right? To throw that first stone?"

  "I'm not seeking stones, portreeve. I'm seeking salvation. The salvation of our race. It's not merely an idle promise told in old stories. We can start again, and without the sin of the apple to haunt us, without the cancer lurking in the heart of humanity."

  Soolin gives a warning. "So you wish to remake us then. The Khelts too had aims such as yours. They too wished to improve humanity, to conquer the darker shadows of our nature, to remake ourselves in a better image. What you offer, sir, is nothing but a repeat of history."

  "No," Patmos says with some conviction. "The Khelts attempted to cheat fate. There are no shortcuts. One cannot replace ten thousand years of wisdom with technological convenience. Doing so destroyed them. But I ask you, honestly, is our path now so different? We walk it slower, yes. But it's the same road, regardless."

  "And you believe you can do better?" Soolin asks dismissively.

  "I do. We've lost our way, our purpose in life. It was easy to do. We came into existence in a world without signposts, forced to find our own meaning without guidance, as an indifferent universe rained thunder and hailstorms down upon us. We drifted. We did horrible things to one another, things that have left wounds in our collective psyche, wounds that fester even now, wounds that will never heal. Our civilization is built on broken foundations, on pillars stained in blood and misery. We are the snake consuming its own tail, growing fat on a banquet of hate, feuds, and greed. Sooner or later, it will end us."

  He continues, "My friends here wish to slay that serpent, not with vapid technology but with wisdom, compassion, and perseverance. They know, as you know, that we've learned much about ourselves over the last five thousand years. We conquered the stars and yet realized the most important place for us is simply a welcoming home with friends and family to share it. We've conquered aging and death and realized it brought us no happiness, for it is the circle of life that is the beating heart of the universe. Without that give and take, that push and pull, we live in a stagnant and dead world, one without meaning. My friends are philosophers and healers, farmers and craft-makers. They will take the best of us with them. They will build us a society on a foundation of hope, love, and the wisdom of the ages. And those foundations, Doctor Soolin, will last forever."

  "Read your history again," Soolin says. "You speak of utopian madness. A hundred colonies over a thousand years have dreamed your dreams. And where are they now? How many millions are in the ground because of them? If you believe your society will be any different, then you, sir, are guilty of the greatest sin of all. Arrogance."

  "No, ours is different," he says. "With your chamber, I will cleanse humanity of all her sins. With a single stroke of the brush, all the wars ever fought, all the inequity ever created, every genocide and conquest; they will have never happened. Don't you see, portreeve? Everything we've ever gone through as a species has led us to this moment. The moment we finally step out of the darkness. This is our baptism. In the very rivers of time."

  "So you plan to end us," Soolin says, more a statement than a question. "You plan to go back before civilization ever began."

  He nods. "Don't we all long that we could go back to our younger selves and create something better? To erase our regrets so they no longer haunt us? To live as the best versions of ourselves?" He points to the acolytes behind him. "They will create a society from all the best lessons from every culture, from every land, from every era. They are diverse, but their society will never have known slavery. Their daughters will never have known submission. Their sons will never have known war. For them, history will begin without original sin. They'll have never left the garden. The rot will be gone. The cancer will have no soil in which to grow."

  Soolin's judgment fills her voice. "You forget, sir, that your world will be built on the sin of genocide."

  "Then let that sin be mine and mine alone. I will suffer it. I will bear it. And when I die, it will die with me."

  "You're not going with them, are you?"

  There's a long pause. Sadness? A regret? "How I could?" he asks. "I've corrupted my own soul, portreeve, more than you could possibly know. It was the devil's bargain I made so that they would not have to. I'm as deserving of paradise as the vile brute whose head lies there on the floor before us. Though he did not know it, this was always meant to be our last supper."

  "And how far back will you send them?" Soolin asks.

  The answer shocks me. "Thirteen million years."

  The portreeve bows her head in understanding. "So you truly intend to end us then. Your followers, they will cultivate the lands and build their cities. They will prosper. Of that I have no doubts. In doing so, they will claim the most fertile regions. What then becomes of our primate ancestors? I'm sure your people will be humane to them. But they will be robbed of the niches they were meant to fill, the environments that would encourage them to walk upright, to create language, to realize their place in the cosmos. When you leave this chamber, humanity will have never been."

  There's a gentleness in his response. "Birth and rebirth, Doctor Soolin. It's the cycle of time, the very nature of the universe. I can't help but think that this is how it was always meant to be. The realization of all our hopes, all our good intentions, the best part of ourselves placed on an ark and surviving on as the detritus of a thousand unholy wars is washed away."

  He asks her longingly, "Surely you've felt it as well, at least once in your life? The tender whisper of what is to come, a sixth sense of destiny. Has it not, so often, found its way into our myths and holy scriptures? Perhaps today, we finally understand why."

  I listen, unconvinced, but I listen. I know how to defeat him, but there's something I need first.

  His name.

  Because I too have read the ancient fables. And in the old myths the gods can be summoned by the utterance of their names. Names are power. For this reason the gods tried to hide their names in obscurity, using only titles and aliases, protecting their names, guarding them feverishly. For a thing that can be summoned—

  Can also be destroyed.

  I hear steps coming from down the hall. A mercenary is leading two Tegan soldiers now into the Chronos Imperium. I crouch behind the white tree as they pass. The two marine prisoners are perhaps the last of the forces from the Ark Royal left alive. One, I realize, is Captain Bashir.

  Once inside, they're forced to their knees.

  "Should we execute them, sir?" the mercenary asks. I've seen her before. She's the red-haired assassin who butchered the Tinker on the Valeyard. I have the impression that without the Red Man, she's next in the chain of command. Patmos seems oddly drawn to the color red. It's a clue, that in hindsight, I'd come to wish I'd understood.

  "No," he tells the woman. "There's been enough bloodshed today. And I fear our friends have no stomach for it. Nor should they." He turns back to Soolin. "You have lost, portreeve. If you were attempting to buy time for a rescue, you can see it was to no avail. I've been as polite as I can. Lower your device. There would no honor in us wrestling you to the ground for it."

  For a moment, I think Soolin might comply.

  But then Bashir speaks up.

  "I know you," the captain says from where he kneels.

  He's looking directly at Patmos with his one good eye.

  "I doubt that very much, captain. I've never before set foot on your world."

  "No, I remember you."

  "You must be mistaken."

  Yet, there is a pause in Patmos.

  Bashir recalls, "It was my very first posting with the Colonial Federate. I was assigned to the Virginia Dare. We received a distress call. Raiders. I lost my eye in the fighting that day. And I remember you. How could I forget? You lost your precious little girl."

  The lines of sadness grow on Patmos's face. He has diffic
ulty with his words. "You were... you were very kind to me that day, captain. It seems our destinies are intertwined. I'm sorry that it had to be your ship that answered the call. Both then and now."

  "Is that why you're here?" the captain asks. "Is that why you're doing this? To go back and save your little girl? You told me you would. I remember."

  Patmos's voice becomes thin. "I don't deny that my heart longed so very much to change the course of that day. I cursed the heavens, and for many years I cursed this ministry. I cursed them for denying us the powers they so selfishly hoard for themselves. But I came to understand what Jonathan Baker must have understood when he founded this chamber and enlisted those sworn to protect it, that while it may be excellent to have a god's strength, it is tyrannous to use it like a god."

  He continues, "I could have risked the universe and everything in it to get what I wanted, but what right did I have to resurrect my loved ones, needlessly taken as they were, over the rights of the millions of fathers before me who lost their own children and their own wives to the cruel whims of humanity's broken soul, to the lecherous trolls of mortal vanity? So instead, I decided to make their loss mean something. I do this for them, captain. So that all the fathers yet to come, while they may still lose their children, for the wheel of time always turns, they will, at the very least, never have to face the evils I was forced to endure, a loss without purpose, at the hands of one's own brothers."

  With a nod, Captain Bashir seems to have accepted his fate. "I've always wondered what happened to you," he tells the man. "Your loss affected me, as well. I was so green. I'd never seen death before. For a long time, I even blamed myself and the Colonial Federate for arriving on Amleth too late to help you. It was our duty and we failed you. I left the frontier after that and immigrated here. I kept the eye patch, though, as a reminder of that day. Your little girl, her name was Tatev, right? I remember that. And your name is Jonathan. I remember that too. I've never allowed myself to forget."

  I take a deep breath.

  Using Hecate, I cross-reference the names.

  I find a match.

  Jonathan P. Samaya. Former colonist of Amleth III.

  His entire life is in the records; his university studies, his expulsion papers, his marriage contract, his planet of birth.

  It's all there.

  I have what I need to save humanity.

  And all it will cost me is my soul.

  I jump.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Here, a highway of stars.

  They streak above me in the night sky, brilliant and beautiful. Below me on a grassy hill sits a young mother, enjoying the calm of late evening with a tiny toddler, one too young to speak in anything other than giggles and smiles.

  He seems so innocent, this boy, so fragile.

  Yet, have I not looked into the seeds of time, peered into the celestial filaments? And through that profane lens have I not been granted an unnatural foresight, seen a darker cosmic story yet to unfold?

  I hide in the shadows not far from mother and son. For a moment, all three of us look to the heavens. Secretly we yearn for Earth. I believe all souls must long for the homes they can never return. For the innocence they can never reclaim.

  I envy the mother. How brave she is, to have fought her way to the edge of civilization, to face impossible odds on an untamed frontier, all to create a better life for her first and only child. I give them this moment together. But only this one. It's all that I can afford them.

  The baby giggles.

  "Oh, my little Johnny, you silly baby," the mother says. Her voice is soft. It makes me miss my own mother. "You see all those stars up there, Johnny? I'd give them all to you if I could."

  The baby reaches out, to touch his mother's lips.

  "We're just poor farmers, and we're alone now, but I promise you, my love, I'll make it better for us. Somehow I will. I'll give you a good life. The life your father and I always dreamed for you."

  There is recent loss in those words.

  "I'll give you all my heart to love, Johnny, and in that heart the courage to make your love known to the universe. You'll do great things. I know you will."

  She kisses his forehead tenderly.

  "We should go inside, before it gets too cold."

  They retire to their small cabin. She places the baby in his crib. For many long moments she cannot look away from her child and I cannot look away from her. He must be the most beautiful thing in the world to her. Will I ever know that kind of love? Will the universe ever offer me such a gift? I try to push those thoughts away.

  Finally, the mother dims the lights and leaves the nursery to finish her evening chores.

  I enter the baby's nursery as silent as a ghost. It's not so difficult. I enter on bare feet. Indeed, I wear nothing but my necklace and the red shawl from Sumer, pulled tightly around me for warmth and modesty. The clothes I bought in the Valeyard could not travel back with me, not to this year. This year sits at the heart of the blackout dates, a time no traveler from the 31st Century has ever entered. They are forbidden to do so.

  But not me.

  I belong to no time. Not anymore. When I was spirited away from my rooftop in Brooklyn, my existence was revoked for nearly a thousand years. It was an act of some consequence. Did they know that at the time? That this would be my fate? That I alone would be endowed with powers not even Careena or Soolin could hope to possess?

  I'd fancy myself a god of time.

  But looking down at this boy, I know I am something else.

  He smiles at me from his crib, reaching toward me with tiny fingers. I want to scream. Doesn't he know why I'm here! I've pulled the shawl to cover my mouth and my hair, exposing nothing more than my eyes. I am a coward too ashamed to show her face while she commits her crimes. To him I must be only a silhouette. A shadow.

  A figure in red.

  Again he smiles.

  Stop it! I scream.

  My hands are trembling. Moments are still passing on Tegana. Soolin is buying me a few minutes, but no more. The cruel and pathetic pendulum of time does not forgive. I must do what I've come to do.

  I take a pillow from beside the little boy.

  Can I truly commit this vulgar act? My stomach turns. Sickness fills me. Tears blind me. There is no forgiveness for what I'm about to do. And the truth is, I wouldn't want it even if there were. How can the universe forgive, when I'll never be able to forgive myself?

  I place the pillow over the babe.

  I press.

  Inside I scream.

  I press harder.

  It wasn't fair to ask this of me.

  I press even harder.

  Were I granted my life again, allowed to rewrite the pages of this wretched and unjust tale, I'd choose to fall from that rooftop in Brooklyn; and in doing so, defy the callous schemings of the stars.

  Harder!

  I collapse. My strength has left me. I cling to the side of the crib with tears uncontrolled. I lower my shawl and rake sharp fingernails across my skin. So much worse I deserve.

  I hear no breathing behind me.

  The deed is done.

  The man one day known as Patmos will never be.

  Were I endowed at this moment with the powers to witness the changes I've destined upon the future, I would see a great many outcomes altered.

  I'd see New Harmony, crippled by the smoke and chaos of war only moments ago, now serene and peaceful; I'd hear the sounds of children crying replaced instead with their laughter; I'd watch as plazas-turned-battlefields curiously fill with the sweet nothings whispered by young couples out for daytime strolls.

  I'd see other things, as well. I'd see the Ark Royal, smoldering in a crater, hollow and defeated, vanish in the blink of an eye from her terrestrial grave; I'd see her now on patrol along popular shipping lanes, a tireless Captain Bashir at the helm, his marines, many whose blood I saw spilling into the streets, alive and well, either at their posts or in their mess halls, trading stories,
writing love poems to crushes, inhabiting a world more innocent than the one I had ever known.

  Not all would be remedied, however.

  Soolin's agents, they were like me, time-stayed; and as such, they will be unaffected by the new currents of time that I've created. Their blood-soaked and limp bodies will still be lying on the steps of the Ministry of Temporal Affairs, much to the horror of school children eagerly arriving for a morning tour.

  Soolin, herself a former agent, will still be in the Chronos Imperium, on her knees, awaiting the end, awaiting the inevitable. Her captors, however, will inexplicably vanish; the mercenaries back to their prison cells and the followers of Patmos, the propagators of his brave new world, to places hopefully more peaceful. I've seen enough violence today that I do not wish them ill. I hope only that they find the meaning and purpose they were so desperately seeking.

  Soolin will infer what I've done. She'll know that I alone possessed the power to alter the cosmos so completely. The only question is, will she, in her religious devotion to the arrow of time, forgive me? Or will she continue to hunt me down until the last syllable of recorded time?

  Oh, Careena, how I wish you were here. I can't go on.

  I can't do this alone.

  And yet I have to.

  I stand and wipe away my tears.

  First, I decide I must find Rhoda. She is not only a temporal outcast like me, but she is my friend. And having jumped from within the Chronos Imperium, she too has now stepped outside the veil of history; she will have been spared the changes in the timeline I created, the ripples I sent through time. And something tells me that in the future to come, we will need one another.