The Fires of Paratime

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The four of us marched across the Square to the Tower, out of step, but who cared?

  Hightel hadn't said one word. We marched down the ramps to the detention levels and still he said nothing. Frey pointed out the cell. Except for the restrainer fields, the thick walls, the windowless and barred room might have passed for a comfortable, if austere, apartment.

  "The executioners arrive, with a young one to be blooded as well. Lead on, servants of tyranny," declared the prison­er. Even without the flowery speech, he didn't look like a miscreant.

  Although we all had youthful builds and did not age physically, the man in the cell gave me the impression of middle age—tiny lines in the corner of his eyes, a spade beard, faded green tunic and matching trousers, and hand-crafted leather boots like my father made. He had light brown hair and a reddish beard, and his eyes sparkled as he spoke.

  Neither Gilmesh nor Frey said a word. I did not either.

  Hightel did.

  "Let's go."

  He took the man by his arm. The prisoner couldn't slide or dive because he couldn't carry Hightel with him. If he did, Hightel would subdue him after break-out.

  If anything happened to Hightel ... but that was why I was there.

  I noticed my palms were sweaty. I didn't know why, The trip had to be routine—just up the ramps and across the center of the Tower to the Hall of Justice. We didn't go outside.

  In the Hall of Justice, the Tribunes were waiting—all three of them—which indicated it was important. Only took one to decide most cases.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when the prisoner was settled into the red "Accused" box and the restrainer field was adjusted and trained on him. He didn't look dangerous, wasn't as big as me, but what do appearances indicate?

  I eased myself into a corner of the section reserved for the Temporal Guard. The Hall of Justice is a magnificent place, lit with slow-glass panels brought from every type of colored sun in the galaxy, with seats enough for thou­sands, the whole Temporal Guard and more, and with the crystal dais for the Tribunes, the black podium for the Advocate of Justice, and the red stone box and podium for the accused.

  Martel was the High Tribune, flanked by Eranas and Kranos. They sat quietly, waiting. The Advocate, silver mantle draped over her formal black jumpsuit, stepped to the podium.

  I drew in my breath as I recognized Freyda, the Coun­selor and my advanced time-jump instructor.

  "Honored Tribunes, honored Guards, honored citizens," she began.

  I looked around the Hall. A handful of Guards and a hundred other spectators were scattered about.

  The name of the accused was Ayren, and he was charged with civil disorder, personal violence, and treason. To me, that seemed like an odd combination.

  Freyda offered the evidence—the testimony of a dozen witnesses, what holo records there were—with a low-key approach. All the testimony of the witnesses was taped, but they were on call should the accused contest the factual content of the testimony.

  Ayren chose not to challenge anything.

  According to the evidence, the frail man in the red stone enclosure of the accused had employed crude explosives to destroy the Domestic Affairs regional office at Trifalls, used a stunner stolen from the wreckage of the office to stun the first Guards who arrived to investigate, and had stood on the ruins preaching the overthrow of the Temporal Guard and asking every citizen to murder the next Guard he saw.

  Fortunately, no one had taken his admonition seriously.

  Finally, Ayren tired of stunning Guards and when the follow-up Domestic Force arrived attacked them with a crossbow taken from the Historical Museum.

  One Guard, Dorik, had taken a bolt through the arm, but as Ayren was attempting to rewind the weapon, he had been stunned by the two remaining Guards, who carted him off to the Tower for detention.

  As the Trial progressed, I became more and more con­fused. Ayren scarcely seemed crazy, but with each damn­ing charge, each report of an assault, each violent action, Ayren either nodded agreement or failed to contest it.

  At the same time, Freyda imputed no motives, just cited each action, the corroborating evidence, and the applicable section of the Code.

  Her summary was brief and concluded with the harsh statement that "Ayren Bly, Green-30, did destroy the prop­erty of the people of Query, did advocate the overthrow of the government by force, and did attack with intent to murder. The evidence is clear and undisputed."

  Not terribly eloquent, but sufficient, considering the wealth of evidence she had displayed on the screens.

  Ayren declined to offer counter-evidence and rose to offer a closing statement, as was his right.

  Ayren stood behind the red podium. In the light from the slow-glass panels that lit the Hall, his eyes held the glitter of a madman's, and his voice was filled with the bitter fire of hate—or something, I guessed.

  "Thank you, Advocate, Tribunes. My time here is worth­less, a coin of gold buried in a charade of counterfeits.

  "My speaking will not save me from Hell, nor will my words alter one iota the orbit of this doomed planet. But I must make the gesture, feeble as it might be, against the winds of time. For the winds of time do not die, but sleep, drowsing in the afternoon, waiting for the God of Time to wake them and change the face of this hapless orb. There will be a God of Time, and you will know Him, though you know Him not. And He will know you, and not all your power will stand against Him in His anger. He will sweep the mighty and the proud, and they will break into less than the dust of time ...

  "Do not condemn me to Hell because I violated the Code. Do not condemn me because I assaulted your agents of repression. If you must condemn me, condemn me for speaking the truth. You have yourselves condemned the people of a once-mighty planet to be your sheep, herded by a few blacksuits, beguiled by an easy life and meaning­less toys, while you tear down the galaxy to protect your poor pastures and preserve your waning power. For it wanes ...

  "Send me to Hell for trying to save the sheep from the shepherds who are no more than black wolves. Send me to Hell, if you must, but do not call it justice ... "

  There was more, but pretty much in the same vein—ranting and raving about the God of Time who would put down the tyrannical Tribunes and the awful evil Guard.

  Poor bastard—didn't seem able to see the mountains for the boulders.

  No one listened to him. Who would have, him spouting such nonsense?

  After Ayren finished, he bowed politely to Freyda, to the Tribunes, and sat down.

  The fire was fled from his eyes, and once more he was just a frail and tired man. For a single moment, I felt sorry for him.

  The black curtain rose around the Tribunes from beneath the dais, but not for long. I didn't time it.

  When it dropped, everyone stood for the verdict. Less than twenty spectators remained.

  The slow-glass panels were damped, except for those focused on the Tribunes. Martel picked up the black wand from the holder and pointed it at Ayren.

  "Ayren Bly, Green-30, the Tribunes and people of Query find you guilty as charged and sentence you to thirty years on Hell, and on your return to a full chrono­lobotomy, to enable you to serve Query as you are best able."

  One of the spectators, a woman, maybe his daughter, contract-mate, collapsed. No one paid any attention to her as two Guards I didn't know joined Hightel. All three grabbed Ayren and marched him out.

  Still no one noticed the fallen woman.

  I walked over. She was clothed in a bright green jump­suit which flattered her tan and golden hair.

  I picked her up and laid her out straight on the bench, wondering if I should cart her over to the Infirmary. She seemed to be breathing normally, but was pale underneath the tan.

  She recovered before I'd decided what to do, stared at me, and sat up, shaking slightly.

  "Are you going to send me to Hell, too?"

  "What on Query for?" I stammered.

  "You're one of them. Isn't that what you d
o to every­one who doesn't agree with you?"

  "Only those who blow up buildings and try to kill inno­cent people."

  "No Guard is innocent."

  I was getting fed up with the conversation. I'd been worried about her, and she, whoever she was, was treating me like I was the criminal.

  "So it's all right to blow up people you don't like if you can just pin a label on them? That justifies it?"

  It didn't even register. She glared at me, practically hissed, "Did you ever wonder what the past was really like? Did you ever ask yourself why we don't have heroes any more? Did you ever ask yourself why you do what you do? Not you! Not your type!"

  She marched off and left me standing there.

  What could I have said? That I intended to be a hero? I didn't. So really, what was there I could have said?

  VII

  The first independent mission the Guard dispatched me on was a search on Heaven IV.

  Although I'd finally gotten my four-pointed gold star and the status of a full Guard, as a rule search missions weren't assigned to such junior Guards. I'd thought Freyda might know and had hunted her up to ask the question.

  She was leaving Personnel when I caught up with her.

  "Why a search on Heaven IV for me?"

  "It's not for your charm, dear Loki. You're the only young Guard left who can handle a split-entry. Anyway, it's a simple mission."

  She gave me a wry smile as she left me standing there. Freyda could always leave me speechless in those early years.

  I headed for Assignments. Heimdall, the Counselor who ran Assignments, had carefully placed his console on a low platform with two lines of smaller consoles radiating out from his.

  Ostensibly the arrangement allowed Guards consoles to study the briefing materials while being close enough to Heimdall to draw on his experience.

  Interestingly enough, the access keys to the briefing files could only be actuated in the Assignments Hall, or by the private codes of the Counselors or the Tribunes.

  Heimdall pointed to one of the consoles at the far end of the row.

  "Heaven IV."

  I pulled the stool up to the console screen and attempted to absorb the information on Heaven IV. The briefing was simple enough.

  A periodic sampling of the "religious" literature from Heaven IV mentioned miraculous appearances and disap­pearances from the skies.

  To the suspicious Tribunes, any strange disappearance indicated the possibility of time-diving or planet-sliding which needed further investigation. Because of the lag in reporting, the reputed events had taken place some three hundred years earlier. My job was to confirm or deny.

  Heaven IV is at the edge of the area regularly searched by the Guard, closer in to galactic center, and an odd planet to boot. The angels had a loosely held social struc­ture, basically non-tech, and for good reason, since they were peak dwellers.

  They shared Heaven IV with the goblins, who were surface dwellers in the hot, and it was hot, lower levels. Heaven IV is a metal-poor, rugged planet with a thick, graduated atmosphere.

  The rest of the briefing was technical.

  After struggling through it, I headed down to Special Stores, where the techs fitted me with a full-seal warm-suit and supplied me with a miniature time-discontinuity detector. Supposedly, the gizmo was designed to point to­ward sudden changes in time fields, which would enable me to track down the case of the mysterious disappear­ances.

  How did a population of ten million people support such high-tech gadgets? We didn't. We bought or took them from various times and places, like Sertis, Sinopol.

  Stealing takes effort, information, hard work. For ex­ample, scattered throughout the Guard were linguists who knew virtually every form of every language in use in each high-tech humanoid world in our sector.

  Whenever a new one turned up, the Guard dispatched someone with skills to learn the lingo. On the linguist's return, he or she was hooked into the input side of a language tank, and the information became available to the entire Guard.

  The business of getting specific technology can be cutthroat at times, like when Odinthor wanted a series of miniature weapons and manipulated the warriors of Ydris from mid-tech to high-tech with back-time tamper­ing. After he obtained the supplies and the production equipment he needed, Odinthor went back and blasted the culture into savagery, partly with the assistance of his brand-new pocket thunderbolts.

  The thunderbolts were handy, but I wondered about the purchase price.

  When I had all the gadgetry in hand, I pulled on the warm-suit, taking the standard diving equipment out of my chest with care. In the mid-afternoon, the equipment room we junior Guards shared was empty. So was the Travel Hall. I liked it that way.

  The time-dive back to the Heaven IV of three hundred years earlier was uneventful, smooth as silver, and break­out was on the dot. I expected that of myself, tried to avoid sloppiness. I always have.

  The sky of Heaven is blue, bluer than the bluest sky of Terra, bluer than the bluest sea of Atlantea. And the pink clouds tower like foamed castles into the never-ending sky.

  Angels on wide spread wings soar from cloud to cloud, half-resting on the semi-solid cloud edges on their flights to and from the scattered mountain citadels that rear tall into the domain of the angels.

  I looked down, and I could see a hell under the dark clouds below—the sullen heat, the red shadows of the surface, and the squat black cities of the goblins.

  I had the split-entry technique down pat, and I hung there with my toes tucked into the undertime, poised in midair.

  After long units just soaking in the feel of the unlimited skies, I studied the time-discontinuity detector dial which I was wearing above my wrist gauntlets. The needle was supposed to point toward any discontinuity.

  Every once in a while it would quiver, and I'd duck un­derstream to narrow the distance. Whoever or whatever was causing the disturbances was doing it in short bursts, like a planet-slide. After having wasted more than a hun­dred units, I still hadn't succeeded in narrowing the area.

  So I marked the real-time coordinates and set them into my gauntlets. Then I dived back fore-time to Query.

  The Travel Hall was deserted. I packed up my gear and started out of the Tower to get a hot meal and a good night's sleep. Hanging in chill midair, warm-suit or not, was tiring, even for me.

  Freyda intercepted me as I was heading for the West Portal. I answered the unspoken question.

  "No. Took me all this time to get within a revolution or two and half a planet. The detector's pretty rough."

  She nodded, inclined her head questioningly.

  I knew what she meant. We walked out of the Tower of Immortals together. It was against custom to slide out. Only a few Guards could, anyway, and for some reason, I didn't want to let on that I was one of the few who could.

  So we walked out onto the ramps leading through the fireflowers that sparkled in the late twilight.

  Freyda stretched out her hand, and I took it, and we slid to her city quarters, high in the Citadel.

  She insisted on cooking, and for being a Counselor, Freyda's a good cook. Very little from the synthesizer. She used simple food, simple recipes.

  A contract wasn't in the offing, not between a junior Guard and a Counselor. Not age differences, but power-of-position differences.

  Sometimes we talked together. Sometimes we slept to­gether, but most times we went our own ways. We never talked policy, and it was probably a good thing for me we didn't.

  For all her apparent gentleness, Freyda believed in the Tribunes and their powers, the Guard, and the system as it stood with heart, soul, and body.

  "Heaven IV, Loki?" she asked as we lay across from each other on the two low couches. The view of the Tower from her rooms in the Citadel was picture perfect. The spire of the Tower glittered like an arrow of light poised in front of the hills.

  The Citadel was one of the few multiple-dwellings left in Quest and dated as far back as t
he Tower itself. Many Guards kept rooms there, as well as retreats elsewhere on Query.

  I had two rooms on a much lower level with no view. Too cramped for me, and I knew I'd have to get a more private place. But I had all the time in the world and was spending my days exploring the tangles of time. I put things off.

  Spent a lot of time on mountaintops, in the quiet high forests under the Bardwalls. I've needed alone-places as far back as I could remember, and before that. My mother told me I was sliding into strange corners around our iso­lated mountain home even before I could complete a full sentence.

  I was retrieved five times by the Locator section before I could talk, or so I've been told. Some of that might have been parental exaggeration, but I doubt that. They didn't exaggerate much. Maybe I was a late talker.

  "Loki?" Freyda asked again. I realized I'd forgotten where I was, with my thoughts out on the empty needle peaks of the west continent.

  I picked up a fistful of nuts before answering her ques­tion.

  "Blue. Never seen such blue," I mumbled while chomp­ing.

  "I remember it," she said softly. "Years ago, Ragnorak took me. You're so like him, Loki. I couldn't hold a split-jump, and he held me there in the air so I could see it—the cloud towers, the angels. If we were only angels, in­stead of the temporal administrators of the galaxy ... "

  "Just part of it," I reminded her.

  She shook her head, and her eyes seemed less deep.

  "How do you like being a god, Loki?"

  "No god, just a simple Guard."

  She laughed, with a tinge to her voice like a harsh silver bell and a sweet one at the same time. "No guard, just a simple god is more like you."

  "Then you're a complicated goddess."

  Times, she was all flame, like me, and times she was colder than the ice computer on Frost. Never knew which would come, fire or ice, but that night was fire, perhaps foreshadowing the future.

  Freyda was gone when I got up the next morning, and that was strange—for her to leave her rooms to me. On those few times when I had stayed the night before, she'd at least awakened me before she left.