“Lady Maire,” he called as he approached. “Welcome to the Chronologic Institute. This is an unexpected honor. I am Dr. Wilner, chief of staff.” He stopped and gave a slight bow, which Maire returned with an almost imperceptible nod.
“Thank you, doctor. May I present my husband, Keryl Clee, and my associate, Arlen Timash.”
“Gentlemen.” Dr. Wilner’s gaze glossed over Timash, but when he glanced at me, he paused, just for a heartbeat. I smiled inwardly; it was a reaction I was becoming accustomed to seeing from Nuum who were encountering me for the first time. Strong mental shields were not uncommon, but my thoughts presented a complete blank. Most Nuum, taking it for a sign that my mental shields were of a higher order than anything they had ever seen before, were taken aback.
But the poor man only knew the half of it. In the past few weeks, my first prolonged contact with Nuum other than Maire, I had become aware that my utter invisibility on the mental plane made it possible for me to scan others’ minds without their realizing it in the slightest, like watching someone through one-way glass. Dr. Wilner’s annoyance at our interruption was well-veiled, but to me he might as well as said it out loud. I mentally wagged a finger in my own face, telling myself to mind my own business. My mother would have been appalled. I pulled my questing mind-fingers back into my own head.
“My lady,” the scientist continued, unaware of my musings, “to what do we owe this honor? I hope the Council has no questions about my work? I’m sure my reports are up to date?”
“Of course, Dr. Wilner,” replied Maire, who had no idea. “But there are some questions which can’t be answered by reports, and some questions that can’t be asked through the datasphere. I wonder if we could talk further in your office?”
It did not take a telepath to see that Dr. Wilner was non-plussed, and a little concerned, but he smiled and escorted us further into the building. I had to admit that they took the charade of being a space agency very seriously. The walls were a panoply of ever-changing star-fields and what I took to be astronomical rarities, while the ceiling, when I glanced up, was nothing more than a vast panorama of space itself. It felt as though if you jumped high enough, you would drift through the stars forever. A fascinating sight, if more than a bit unnerving.
And yet—what space bureau ever required so many guards? At each intersection stood a sentry at strict attention, many rivaling me in size, several larger than that. I had no idea there were that many Nuum in existence who looked as though they could wrestle me to a standstill—and from my impression was that Maire was thinking much the same. I was suddenly very glad we had included Timash in our outing.
After descending several stories in what resembled no elevator I had ever seen—the outer space theme extending even there—we emerged into a corridor whose walls and ceiling were far more utilitarian than those above, albeit finely-decorated. Plainly we had come to the working portion of the facility, which lacked the gaudy spectacle of the public areas. Still, the ambience still favored the celestial, an attention to detail that, frankly, lead me to wonder if Maire’s information could possibly have been wrong and this was an ill-afforded wild goose chase.
Until Dr. Wilner made his first, unwitting, mistake. Ushering us into a comfortable room with a large table surrounded by actual permanent chairs rather than extruded furniture, he said:
“I think we can conduct our conversation more comfortably in the conference room. My office is rather small, and—” he smiled deprecatingly—”a bit messy.” He waved us to chairs.
Except that I knew he was lying.
My mother would have had no grounds for censure; the good doctor thought his imposture safe because, to normal minds, it would have been. But since I had never had to practice defensive measures, the same sensitivity that had allowed me enough meager access to men’s minds even in the 20th century to see if they were lying was at work here—and Dr. Wilner was lying. He had not brought us to this conference room because his office was inadequate; he had brought us here so that we could not see his “mess.”
Under the pretense of helping Maire with her chair, I put my head next to hers and whispered, “He’s lying. This is the right place.”
I itched to start working on Dr. Wilner, but this was a conversation, not an interrogation. We needed to bring him to our side, no matter how reluctant he was right now to speak, and Maire was far better equipped to secure his cooperation than I, and certainly more, I thought, than Timash. Then I realized that Timash had seated himself just to Dr. Wilner’s left, not so close as to appear threatening, but close enough that the doctor was aware of his bulk out of the corner of his eye.
It was time for me to start giving my friends more credit.
After the eternal offer of refreshments, and the time-honored refusal thereof, Maire got down to business.
“Dr. Wilner, as you know, I am a member of the Council of Nobles. However, I am not here today on behalf of the Council.” She stopped for a moment and appeared to take care with her next words. “In fact, I am not here at all. Do you understand?”
“Of course, my lady,” he said carefully, although he did not understand at all. His mind was already sifting through an analysis of the council factions Maire might represent and how much assistance he could safely give her without compromising himself.
And then she threw him another curveball. “You know, of course, that we recently fought a very short war with the klurath.”
He frowned. This was not going in any direction he understood. “Yes…”
“Then you know that the war ended very suddenly with the klurath surrender.” He was nodding as she went along. “What you may not know, Dr. Wilner, is that my husband was the man who single-handedly forced that surrender.” He looked at me, eyebrows raised, but she went on. “When I tell you that the Council has invested my husband with very special powers, you may believe me.”
Of course it was all a load of garden mulch, but Dr. Wilner did believe her. Now he was stuck in a small room between a member of the Council of Nobles, their minister plenipotentiary, and a gorilla. I was wrong; this was an interrogation, and Maire had played him like a violin. She made me feel like an amateur. If he could hang on to his secrets now, he should quit wasting his time as a scientist and become a master spy.
Then Maire rolled up her sleeves and got to work.
Chapter 5
Trapped
“Dr. Wilner, we have a problem. And we need to know if you can help us.”
“Of course, my lady, anything I can do. The Chronologic Institute is at your disposal.”
Maire smiled without warmth. “I know. But it isn’t the Chronologic Institute I need.” She raised one finger to forestall his objection. “Please just listen. But remember that we did not come all the way here without knowing where we were heading.” She proceeded to explain our problem with a precision that I doubt the Library could have surpassed. Timash and I waited quietly while she presented our case, in the process more frightening to me now than Zachary Kyle had done when he laid it out for us initially.
As much as it scared me, by the time Maire was finished, Dr. Wilner was ready to climb out of his own skull.
He covered his fears, of course, but I could see them. I could hardly blame the man; Maire had set him up beautifully, impressing, confusing, and unnerving him in the space of a few minutes, and then she lowered the boom by giving him a preview of the end of the world before his next birthday. Any man would have been pushed to the brink, and I admired Dr. Wilner for the way he threw up his professional experience as a shield long enough to regain his inner composure.
To his further credit he no longer pretended not to know why we had come to him.
“I would give a great deal to know where you obtained your information, my lady, but since you obviously do not plan to tell me, I won’t ask. I can tell you that our instruments have been monitoring some anomalies lately, but since we understand so little of how the temporal line of the space-time co
ntinuum works, we didn’t know if we should be worried or excited.” He let out a harsh breath. “Now we know.”
“Doctor,” I said, “do you think your instruments might be able to pinpoint where the anomalies are coming from?”
He turned an expression on me that I knew all too well from the Librarian. “Sir, with all due respect, you plainly know nothing about temporal anomalies. It is not a matter of where they originate, but when. If I can put this in simple terms… Temporal waves travel on the temporal axis, not the spatial. We might be able to tell you when the waves began, but you would have to go to that time and start your search then. Which, obviously, you can’t do.”
I felt cold inside, and bewildered. There must be something we could do. Why had Kyle Zachary come all these years to warn us if we were helpless to stop it? I looked at Maire and knew she was asking herself the same questions, but by the haunted look in her eye, I knew also that she had no answers.
“Do temporal waves travel forward in time, or can they travel backward, too?” We all stared at Timash, but his attention was fixed on Dr. Wilner. “I would think they would travel forward.”
“Yes, yes, they do,” the scientist replied slowly. “The origination point is definitely in the past, probably in the last 500 years. But I can’t tell you with any more specifically than that.”
“Then whatever was transmitting the waves,” Timash said, “might still be there.”
We were ready to grasp at the faintest straw. “If we could find it,” I whispered, “we might be able to decipher its purpose.”
“There could even still be working parts,” Dr. Wilner said. “We might be able to recreate the technology, and undo some of the damage.”
Maire was already on her feet. “We need to get started. First, Doctor, can you show us when the waves started. That might help us narrow down our search area. The Thorans had already abandoned many areas when the Nuum arrived. Whoever was doing this would have wanted isolation. We can ask the Librarian for old maps.”
“Come to my office. I’ll get my people working on it right away.”
Timash caught up with me as we left the conference room. “You realize how much area we’re talking about here? We’re not going to be able to cover by ourselves.”
It took me a moment to grasp his meaning. “We will need the Nuum to help us. We are going to have to let them in on the situation.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “Unless Dr. Wilner can narrow down our search…we have no choice.”
He was right, and that aspect of our problem had completely escaped me. Truth to tell, I was hardly certain that we could rouse the Nuum to act on our warning before our deadline was up, let alone in time to do anything about it. What had not escaped me was the overarching irony of the whole mess: Twenty years ago I had crossed half the planet to see if a working time machine still existed so that I could go home. Now I was preparing to search the entire planet to see if one still existed so that I could stay here.
As we traversed the corridor, I was once again struck by the presence of the guards. The Institute certainly seemed to take its security seriously.
“Doctor Wilner,” I said, coming abreast of him, “if I might ask, why do you have so many guards?”
He looked around at the men standing attention as though he were seeing them for the first time.
“They’re new, actually. We received instructions from the Council. Apparently with all that’s been happening they’re afraid the Thorans are getting stirred up again.”
I looked at Maire, and she shrugged. I was about to dismiss the guards’ presence as being none of my concern when I happened to catch the eye of one of them. After a second he broke contact and returned to his post without so much as blinking at me, and without the typical mental double-take that was becoming so familiar. It was such an odd omission that I ignored my hard-learned manners and reached out to test, ever so gently, his mental shielding.
There was nothing there.
Had I not already been passing him, I could never have kept my reaction a secret from him. As casually as I could, I moved toward Maire and put an arm around her, bending to her ear while I kept a lover’s smile on my face.
“The guards are Thoran. Like me. Keep walking.”
It felt as though we were strolling through a room lined with hungry lions stationed at thirty-yard intervals. I kept waiting for one of them to sound the alarm, but either their telepathic skills were rudimentary, or they were playing some longer game. After an endless walk, Dr. Wilner turned left down a short, empty corridor, and stopped before a blank door. As it slid open to him, I turned about to see four of the guards had silently followed us. As I did so, they abandoned stealth and surged forward. I had no doubt their comrades were already on their way.
“Get inside!” I shouted, shoving Dr. Wilner into his office. Maire was in a defensive crouch, but we were outnumbered and I told her to follow him. Timash had had no warning, but he and I had survived enough scrapes that he needed none. But neither was he retreating, and he seemed to grow until he almost filled the hallway. Having no choice, I stood with him, but it was obvious which of us was giving our foes pause.
“Ker—!” Maire’s cry was cut off in mid-word by the closing door. If she or Dr. Wilner had any sense, they would lock it.
Leaving Timash and me cornered in that tiny hallway, two against an army.
Chapter 6
Fort Sumter of the Time War
I automatically reached for my trusted Webley sidearm and my hand came away empty. Too late I remembered that Maire had recommended I leave it on the ship because such an antique could only cause unwanted comments and questions. I had only my baton-staff, and if our foes unlimbered the weapons they carried on their own belts, it would offer me nothing but a chance to look menacing as I died. Timash had no sidearm; as a non-Nuum, he was forbidden to carry such technology. But then again, he was a gorilla.
Whoever these men were, they were not used to talking animals, because they approached us warily—but none brandished his weapon. Perhaps they wanted to take us alive—although I could see on their faces that the problem of taking down a full-grown ape with their bare hands had not escaped them. Their solution was obvious: they were awaiting reinforcements.
When faced with poor odds, I have a habit of doing just what the enemy does not expect, and Timash had seen that tactic enough times that he should be waiting for my signal. And if I was going to give it, time was running out.
“Something wrong, boys? You look like you would rather be beating up a Librarian!”
Immediately a form shimmered into being behind them and a dry voice inquired, “Would any of you gentlemen happen to know the way to the supernova lab?”
To a man, they jumped and half-turned at the sound—and true to form, I charged. If I was wrong and Timash was not waiting for my signal, I was in deep trouble.
The “guard” nearest me took my baton painfully on his forearm. It saved him from a cracked skull, but he fell back, cradling his arm. I pushed forward, shoving him into one of his friends. He howled again as I crashed into him.
A roaring close on my left told me that Timash had followed my lead. The bone-jarring thumps I heard told a glorious story, but I had too much on my plate to appreciate it. My first opponent had dropped back so that the second could engage me, but then he slipped around and circled my neck with his free hand, cutting off my air. I tried to back-pedal and slam him into the wall, but the floor was too slick for traction. Meanwhile the second man had moved in and was pummeling me with head and body blows that I could only partially deflect. I felt blood warming the side of my face. He punched me in the stomach, causing the air in my lungs to explode upward, only to be blocked at my constricted throat, and I nearly blacked out.
If I lost consciousness, I would never awaken.
With my blood pounding in my ears, I snapped my head backward as hard as I could, but with an arm around my throat I could get no leverage, and while I inflicted a painful
bump on us both, I could not dislodge the man who was choking me. Dimly I realized that the other had left off hitting me; thinking me finished, he must have gone to help his friends against Timash.
My vision faded to a small point. There was no air left.
And then the pressure vanished and I could breathe! I doubled over with the effort, my entire body heaving and my vision gradually clearing. There were hands on me, and a voice in my ears and my head desperately trying to gain my attention, but I had none to spare until my lungs began to return to a normal rhythm and the sick feeling in my gut started to fade. Only then did I understand that the hands and the voice belonged to my wife.
“Keryl! Can you hear me? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I croaked. I reached to lean against the wall for support, and almost tripped over something. Maire caught me and guided me to a safer spot. The thing I had almost tripped over was the body of the man who had been choking me—at least, I believed it was. It was difficult to see his features under all the blood.
I should never have believed that she would remain safely behind a locked door while I fought outside of it.
It did not surprise me in the least that Timash stood over the other three, although none of them seemed as badly used as this one. At the sudden sound of running feet, I straightened up as best as I could, though I feared I would be little use in the fight.
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