The Fires of Paratime

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  As I thought about it, I realized that she'd never been to my quarters, nor had I ever been to her retreat, not even when she'd had me for dinner back when I had been in basic training.

  I knew she had a place in the hills overlooking Quest. I'd heard Heimdall saying it had a fabulous view, but I'd never been there at all. You can know so little about your lovers, I guessed, even your very first.

  I had to get back to the Travel Hall, back to Heaven IV, before Heimdall rattled me for goofing off. After gulp­ing down a few swigs of firejuice, some cheese, and a piece of fruit, I cleaned up and pulled on a new black jumpsuit Freyda had brought back from Textra for me.

  Heimdall was checking the logs in the Travel Hall and smiled, that brilliant and meaningless grin of his when I walked in.

  "Back to Heaven, or from it?"

  I shrugged. We all had to put up with his crass man­nerisms. He was good at trend projections and organizing assignments, but was a lousy diver. The older Guards called him "all-seeing," not quite mockingly.

  I thought he talked too much and too sharply, but that could have been because I disliked him.

  "Heaven IV," was all I said.

  He didn't respond, and I went into the equipment room and suited up.

  If anything, the blue sky was bluer, and the cloud towers pinker. All in the mind. I'd dived back to a point just a few units after I'd left the day before.

  I was in the right real-time. The needle on the detector kept twitching and jumping.

  After fifty units sliding around the blue skies, feeling colder and colder, warm-suit or not, watching angels soar­ing, occasionally fighting with those black ice lances, duck­ing under the darker shadows of the pink clouds, I decided I was making little or no progress.

  I back-timed and broke-out far enough earlier to see if I could discover when the time-discontinuities started. So wrapped up in my own thoughts was I that I slipped out under a cloud shadow right next to a pair of youngsters of opposite sexes, engaged as such youngsters are often wont to be.

  After the shock passed—me seeing them, and them see­ing this wingless being looking much like them standing in midair—I shrugged it off and decided to confuse the issue. I threw a thunderbolt from my wrist gauntlets at a passing bird. Perhaps it was an eagle, but I vaporized him with one bolt.

  Then I smiled at the pair and slid elsewhere—more carefully. No one would believe them if they reported, I hoped.

  I dived back up to Query and popped out in the Travel Hall. After storing my gear, I located Heimdall. Not diffi­cult, because he was reigning over the Assignments Hall from his central console.

  I explained.

  Heimdall called in Freyda, Frey, Gilmesh, and Kranos.

  I explained again.

  "Sterilize the whole atmosphere," recommended Heim­dall.

  Freyda frowned at that.

  Frey—Freyda's son by her fourth or fifth contract—was walking around the consoles twirling the light saber. He'd picked that up from some obscure group of galactic-wide do-gooders from near the end of back-time limits. Watching his nervous gestures, I wondered who his father might have been. For that matter, I wondered how Freyda had entered four contracts. I couldn't see her in one.

  Frey stopped pacing.

  "How about a gene-trace?"

  "What?"

  "Go fore-time. If the trait expands, you could locate a lot of angels with the trait. You aren't trying to find a diamond in a swamp. Stun one. Take a tissue sample and bring it back. The gene laboratories on Weldin ought to be able to synthesize a virus that's fatal to that one gene."

  "Ingenious," muttered Heimdall, "but how do you propose to isolate that one gene from all the others? You all may be going to elaborate lengths just to exterminate the race."

  "If the biological engineers on Weldin can't discover the right gene, no one can," Frey pronounced dogmatically.

  I thought there were holes big enough in Frey's plan to march the whole Guard through, but no one was asking my opinion. I decided not to volunteer it.

  "See what you can do, Loki," announced Heimdall.

  I hadn't had much to eat before I'd left that morning; so before I headed back to the Travel Hall, I slid out to Hera's Inn for a bite or three.

  I picked out a scampig filet from the synthesizer and wolfed it down with a beaker of firejuice.

  Patrice was the only one in the Guard equipment room when I got back to the Travel Hall. She was finishing her suit-up.

  "Destination?" I asked casually.

  "Sertis. Where else? Do they ever send junior Guards anywhere but to pick up machinery and delicacies?" Her blue eyes were cold.

  "It'll get better," I said inanely.

  "It better." She left without another word.

  I couldn't figure some people out. As I strapped on my warm-suit and other gear, I wondered, Didn't everyone have to start at the beginning? But did I? Within a year of getting full Guard status, I was on an independent search. Patrice was still being a porter. Sometimes I was, too, though.

  On Heaven IV, the sky was still blue, a thousand years fore-time, the clouds pink, and angels flew.

  Fewer angels than centuries before, it seemed, but plenty.

  I checked the time-discontinuity detector. Not once did it quiver.

  I quartered the planet, spent another fifty units, but not even a twitch on the detector.

  There was a different feeling about this time, a feeling of aftermath, but I couldn't pin it down. Something had happened, I was convinced.

  I dived further back-time, the real-time equivalent of Query "Now."

  On break-out, I found plenty of angels, plenty of pink clouds.

  Some of the pink cloud towers struck me as angular, regular, as if they'd been shaped.

  I slid into one, found it hollow and filled with angels bearing pink ice lances. I dropped undertime before my presence registered, I thought.

  Something was brewing. The discontent, if I could call it that, permeated the endless skies.

  Half the angels had the pink ice lances, and half were carrying black ones. The black lancers and pink lancers avoided each other.

  I ducked undertime and emerged about a year later, more from curiosity than anything. Everything was over, but the moans. Damned few angels anywhere.

  I back-timed about a half year and broke-out in the middle of a pitched battle of the pink lances against the black lances.

  I didn't believe it. All the information on Heaven IV stated that the angels were pacifists, and that only the gob­lins below had warlike traits.

  But believe it or not, I was hanging in the middle of a war raging across the skies of Heaven.

  I studied the time detector and found nothing.

  I had a good idea I wasn't going to find a thing, but I coppered my bets by trying a good double-dozen time/locales for spot checks. Nothing.

  That's what I told Heimdall and Freyda.

  "So now what should I do?" I asked.

  "Drop it," ordered Heimdall.

  I had a funny feeling that the whole mess was self-fulfilling, but wasn't sure I could explain why I didn't try, either.

  "Loki, Athene needs another Guard." Heimdall dismissed me.

  As a very junior Guard, with no permanent assignment, I was shuffled from pillar to post. Often it was Main­tenance, sometimes Assignments, where Heimdall had me help prepare briefing tapes, but most often it was Special Stores.

  Not just for me, but for all the unassigned Guards. Special Stores was in charge of procurement, responsible for getting the items we couldn't make by sending Guards off to buy, beg, borrow, or steal whatever was necessary.

  Not that it was a bad section to work for, although the planets and times we saw were all stable and settled, and the junior Guards like me all dealt in cash transactions, but after a while I wondered.

  The more senior Guards came up with the cash and did the "steal" operations. Most non-time-diving peoples store valuables in locked enclosures. It's very simple
for a trained Guard to dive directly inside and remove a portion of what passes for currency.

  Usually we don't take much. What with our simplified culture, low population, and the use of the duplicating technology, we don't need too many items.

  After my fifth or sixth trip to Sertis to buy power cells, however, I had some questions. Some items don't dupli­cate. Power cells are one, and the Guard who tried it was likely to end up with a few holes blown in him.

  Perhaps because it was so late in the afternoon, perhaps because I was unhappy with the outcome of the Heaven IV mission, I wondered a bit too loudly for Counselor Athene.

  "Can't we ever make anything?" I'd asked Halcyon.

  We'd just finished checking the posting sheets to dis­cover we'd been assigned a trip to Sertis for power cells.

  "What do you mean?" asked Athene.

  I must have jumped. I hadn't realized anyone else was around.

  "Well-uh-seems like we have to gather a lot from everywhere, and that we make nothing."

  "There is that," Athene said.

  Halcyon stepped back and said nothing. The twinkle in her eye told me I was on my own. Not nastily, Halcyon's not like that, but sort of a now-you've-stepped-into-it look with mischief in it.

  I decided I should have followed Halcyon's example and kept my mouth shut, but it was too late.

  "Who do you think ought to make all the materials we import, and how?" Athene asked in her gentle voice.

  Athene was one of those deceptive-looking Guards. Taller than me, slender as a willow, with softly curled hair like spun gold, a small nose, together with a soft voice, a stubbornness harder than the Bardwall granite, and slate-gray eyes that could burn hotter than a nova—that was Athene. I didn't think she ever forgot.

  "Do you have any suggestions, Loki?"

  "Maintenance," I suggested lamely, forgetting my resolve to keep my mouth shut.

  "Not a bad idea. I wonder what Baldur would think about it."

  I didn't care for the tone of speculation in her voice.

  "After you make your pickup this afternoon, Loki, I'd like to talk to you again."

  I noted the rest of the details from the posting sheet, signed for the Sertian currency, and trudged down the ramp toward the Travel Hall.

  From nowhere, Halcyon joined me.

  "You had to open your head, didn't you?"

  "Wasn't too sharp," I admitted. "I wonder what she's got in store for me when we get back."

  We didn't say much as we got ready to dive. What was there to say?

  Sertis is high mid-tech or low high-tech, that is, the time locale we were posted for.

  Once during training I asked why we made so many trips there, but Gilmesh answered my question with a question: How much can you carry on a dive? And that's the problem. So far the Guard hadn't run across any mechanical time-diving equipment. Just people, and that meant that anything that got carried across time was carried by some poor Guard, usually some poor junior Guard or trainee.

  Needless to say, that limitation had a profound influence on the culture I grew up in.

  The dive was uneventful, boring, in fact.

  Halcyon and I made the pickup, turned the two cases of power cells over to the Special Stores supply desk, where a Senior Guard named Quetzal logged them in and shooed us away.

  Halcyon decided to have dinner. I wanted to face the music with Athene before leaving for the day.

  I presented myself at the archway into her corner of the Special Stores Hall.

  "Loki, our talk will have to wait. Martel has announced his decision to step down."

  I didn't understand, and my face must have mirrored my lack of comprehension. I just wanted to get it over with.

  She straightened and explained.

  "If Martel steps down, we need to select a new Tribune."

  Everything clicked. The ten Counselors and the Coun­selor-elect proposed by the Senior Guards would deter­mine the new Tribune. The three Tribunes would then select among themselves the new High Tribune. That was an oversimplification, but a rough explanation without going into the various ballots and classes of ballots or the single right of refusal by the two remaining Tribunes.

  The Senior Guards balloted for a Senior Guard to be­come a Counselor. Then the eleven Counselors and the two Tribunes decided the new Tribune.

  Athene was getting prepared for her part in the selec­tion so she didn't have the time to put a junior Guard through her logical wringer, for which I should have been grateful. I wasn't. I wanted to get it over with.

  More to delay her than for any other reason, I asked, "Have the Senior Guards selected the new Counselor?"

  "No. I suspect Heimdall will be the one they pick."

  She didn't elaborate. I couldn't see Heimdall as Coun­selor, but since I wasn't a Senior Guard, it wasn't any of my business.

  The Counselor selection process was over in a couple of days. How couldn't it be? Of the two hundred Senior Guards, all but a handful were on Query. The others were recalled quickly, and with everyone able to meet in the Hall of Justice, they picked Heimdall, just as Athene had pre­dicted, within a few hundred units.

  In the meantime, the Guard functioned. While it didn't happen too often, picking a Tribune wasn't such a big deal to the average Guard. At least, it wasn't to me. The office, rather than the holder, generated the respect.

  With all my rationalization, I wasn't particularly happy to see Heimdall picked as the new Counselor.

  I did not know all of the Counselors, and some I knew as Guards, without knowing they were Counselors. I was familiar with Freyda, Athene, Baldur, who'd taught us Maintenance as trainees, Odinthor, and, of course, Heim­dall.

  Baldur had never said a word to indicate his position, and I couldn't recall him wearing the gold-edged black star of a Counselor. Maybe he did, and I hadn't noticed it.

  The second day of the selection, while the eleven Coun­selors and the two Tribunes were holed up picking a suc­cessor to Martel, I had lunch with Loragerd at Hera's Inn. It's always been a favorite with the younger Guards.

  "What do you hear about the selection? How do they narrow it down from thirteen?"

  "Loki, sometimes you're so naive." She smiled and reached across the table to ruffle my hair. I liked it when she did that.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Not a real choice at all. Probably already narrowed down to one or two. I'd say Baldur or Justina."

  "Justina?" The name was familiar, but I couldn't place her.

  "You know, the stern, let-us-do-what-is-right-for-the-people type who runs Observation? She gave us the indoc­trination on the Weather Service, but left all the training up to Pertwees."

  I had a hazy mental picture of a dark-haired woman, stiff, cold, and full of herself, a female version of Heim­dall, in a way.

  "Didn't know she was a Counselor."

  "Can you imagine any Guard running such a tedious operation without some reward?"

  "Some of the satellites are pretty run-down," I men­tioned, recalling the one Sammis had stuck into my Attitude Adjustment test. "Where did they ever get them anyway?"

  "Loki, sometimes I think you do your best to forget history, especially if it doesn't square with legend. They predate the Guard, relics of our own mid-tech past. Can you imagine us building one now?"

  I couldn't, but I was more interested in the selection. I changed the subject back.

  "Which one do you think they'll pick?"

  Loragerd took a sip of the dark ale she liked so much before answering. She was still wearing her hair as short as the first day we met as new trainees.

  "Baldur. He's fair and doesn't pick fights."

  Made sense to me.

  We were both wrong. When we reported back to Assign­ments, after lingering at lunch, Heimdall was back in his high stool on the platform, with his brand-new gold-edged black star.

  "Who?" we asked in unison.

  "Freyda," he answered, understanding the question. He seemed pl
eased, but who wouldn't after having been elected Counselor.

  Glammis was sitting next to him, smiling broadly. That was one of the few times I'd seen her smile, not that I ran across her very often. She was the assistant supervisor of Maintenance, usually quite reserved. She and Heimdall spent a lot of time together, but Loragerd had told me that they'd never been contract-mates or even shared quarters.

  Heimdall must have been in a good mood. He beamed at Glammis, even smiled at us.

  "Loragerd, you can take off the afternoon. Loki, as far as I'm concerned, you're free also, but I understand Athene wants a word with you first."

  I didn't think the Senior Guards or Counselors ever forgot anything.

  Athene was expecting me, and she didn't waste any time.

  "Loki, I've been thinking. I've had a chance to talk it over with Heimdall and some of the other Counselors, the Tribunes, and we all agree you need a permanent assign­ment."

  I waited for the other boot to fall. Except for Ferrin, no one else out of my trainee class had been made permanent. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad. I felt I could take Special Stores, Assignments, even the Weather Service, or Archives.

  "Maintenance."

  I must have cringed.

  "It's not that bad. Baldur says you're one of the few newer Guards with any mechanical aptitude at all."

  Why was Heimdall so interested in keeping me out of trouble?

  "When do I report?"

  "I'd say today, but it's the nearest thing to a full holiday. Make it first thing in the morning."

  I bowed and said thank you. I was a bit dazed. Like Patrice had said years ago, divers didn't work in Main­tenance, especially not crackerjack divers. And I was be­coming a damned good diver, if not the best. Everyone said so. So why had they all decided to stuff me away in Maintenance?

  I ran down Loragerd at Hera's Inn and asked her the same question. She wasn't terribly sympathetic, but that might have been because she and Halcyon had been com­paring notes, and I'd burst in.

  "You're favored with one of the first permanent assign­ments, while Halcyon and I cart perfume and power cells around, and immediately you run here to tell us what's wrong with it. What did you want? Special assistant to Freyda in view of your past services?"