The Fires of Paratime

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Loragerd was high on the dark ale, I figured, but the crack hurt.

  "That's not it at all."

  "Not completely, anyway," chipped in Halcyon.

  Loragerd brushed Halcyon's comment away with a wave and turned full face to me.

  "Sometimes you're so dense. Don't you see? All support jobs are dull. Do you want to lug supplies across time and keep records for Athene? How about keeping reports for Gilmesh in Personnel? Or would you rather listen to citizen complaints at Domestic Affairs in between hearing Frey's boasts?"

  I had to chuckle at the last. Loragerd always made so much sense. Why couldn't I see it that way?

  She reached over and touched my arm briefly.

  "Other things will have to change, too, Loki. Remem­ber that."

  What did she mean?

  Loragerd switched the subject to the selection process. I didn't have a chance to comment. Halcyon looked peeved for a moment, but relaxed as Tyron and Ferrin wandered over.

  "You know," began Tyron, dumping gossip on the table like a chunk of rockwood, "there's a rumor that the first person selected to be Tribune refused the election."

  "Who was it?" I snapped.

  "Was it Justina?" asked Loragerd.

  "Corbell? Athene? Baldur?"

  Tyron shrugged. "I don't know. No one's saying, but it's never happened before."

  "But that sort of thing wouldn't be in the Archives," protested Ferrin.

  I sipped my firejuice and let them discuss it. Despite the furor over the rumor, I was thinking about reporting to Maintenance. No one really understood. What diver really wanted to stand ankle-deep in oil and grease?

  I left early, while the others were still singing and talk­ing.

  First, I slid up to a little ledge under Seneschal, high in the Bardwalls, and stared at the silver rivers in the can­yons below. That ledge was the sort of place where I in­tended to have my own private retreat someday. A place where the only sound was the occasional hiss and flap of a night eagle or the whistling of the wind. In my thin jumpsuit, I soon grew cold and slid back to my own quar­ters in the Citadel.

  After a solid night's sleep, I reported to Baldur the next morning with my heart in my hands, so to speak.

  He didn't let me voice my misgivings, and, sitting back in his plain stool, he started right in.

  "A lot of Guards have the feeling that Maintenance is grubby, that we work ankle-deep in grease, oil, grit. Now take a good look around ... "

  Baldur stood a good head and a half taller than me, and with his light blue eyes and silver-blond hair, looked like a gentle sort of giant. His voice was mid-toned, a light baritone that cut through noise and distractions without being raised and without annoying. Baldur was instantly likable, yet conveyed solidity. But somehow no description really did him justice.

  That morning, as he outlined Maintenance, I wished they'd selected him Tribune, forgetting that if they had, he wouldn't have been running Maintenance.

  Baldur led the way to a corner area, well lighted, with a clear worktable and a comfortably padded, high-backed stool.

  "Here's your space. The work you'll start with is replac­ing or repairing microcircuitry in wrist gauntlets and stun­ners. They get banged up so often it's simpler for us to repair than replace. Within the year, you will be able to rebuild any microcircuitry you can see from scratch. Then we'll go into more elaborate work."

  That sounded elaborate enough.

  The technical side was straightforward. Baldur demon­strated the console reference guides for the information on gauntlets and stunners, the micro-magnifier and step-down microcircuit waldoes, and pointed out the bin where what I had to handle would be placed.

  Next came a guided and detailed tour of the Hall, and we ended up back in his spaces.

  "Sit down." He pointed at a vacant stool. I sat.

  "Why is an understanding of machinery and electronics important to a Guard?"

  "Because a Guard can't use to its fullest capabilities equipment he doesn't understand." That's what he told us in training.

  Baldur laughed.

  "Well, you do remember those lectures. But there's more. I may say some things which will surprise you or shock you, but try to keep them in context.

  "First, the Guard is composed generally of a group of polite barbarians. Second, barbarians have a tendency to destroy what they don't understand. Third, most past Tribunes have historically understood that, from Sammis Olon on. Fourth, most Guards don't. Now, do you know what I mean by a polite barbarian?"

  I didn't have the faintest idea, but decided to guess.

  "Someone who is polite, but doesn't understand."

  "What's polite? Understand what?"

  I shrugged.

  "Look at it this way, Loki. Most Guards know that if you push the stud on a stunner and point it at someone, it knocks them out. Why?"

  I shrugged again.

  "Then how did someone discover how to build one—by trying every possible piece of electronic gadgetry in the universe?"

  I must have looked as blank as I felt.

  Baldur grinned. "Pardon me if I get on my podium, but I can get intense on this subject."

  I nodded, wondering where he was headed.

  "I'll cut it short for now. It takes an understanding of physiology and electronics to build a stunner. On Query we don't have that knowledge. Do you understand the simple chemistry behind a projectile gun? A linguistics tank? That's what I mean by barbarians. Every culture has its barbarians, but in the average culture when there get to be too many barbarians and too few individuals who understand the technology, the culture collapses.

  "On Query, no one understands the mechanics of every­day life. Nor that the Guard structure is all that really maintains our way of life. In the Guard, basically three functions are critical—Maintenance, the data banks of the Archives, and Special Stores.

  "One of the reasons I give trainee-lectures is to empha­size that point, but it's gotten harder and harder to get across, even in my lifetime. A related problem is power. Stored power can't be run through a duplicator. So we import generators, as you may recall from our episode on Sinopol, and power cells. Maintenance has to repair that equipment."

  Baldur paused, studied me, and sighed.

  "I can see I've just about overloaded your rational faculties. We talk more later."

  That was my first day in Maintenance.

  VIII

  Wrapped in furs and close against a young lady with smooth, cool skin, I was dreaming, flying lightnings across a twilight sky. Though Loragerd lay by me, she was not within the dream, as I strode across massive black moun­tains to pull down night.

  Fires streamed from my fingers and the stars paled to nothing against the light I wielded ...

  A faint hum came from the clothes strewn behind the couches, leading me from the dream. I wondered if some­one were calling, but let myself slip back into the clutches of sleep, drawing Loragerd closer.

  Her black, pixie-cut hair was fluffed slightly, and the warm fragrances of trilia and cinnamon drifted from her body and enfolded us in the early morning.

  Suddenly, two Guards I didn't know were shaking me out of my sleep.

  Instantly awake, I threw the smaller Guard off my shoulders and into the wall. I'd seen him before, a brown-haired ferret who usually followed Heimdall around the Tower.

  The other Guard had plucked Loragerd out of the furs and had his paws all over her. She was white-faced and wearing nothing at all.

  The first Guard was still crumpled in the corner, trying to regain his feet. The pawing one saw me coming and dropped Loragerd like a lava-stone.

  "Heimdall—needs you now—in Assignments," he stam­mered.

  "So—was this necessary?"

  I wanted to take both bastards and drop them over Sequin Falls.

  "Heimdall sent us," apologized Ferret-face, as if that excused anything and everything.

  "And how did he know where we were?" I asked without th
inking.

  Nobody answered me, and I realized what a stupid ques­tion I'd posed. Heimdall had sent them over to Locator to get the coordinates and in they'd slid.

  Looking at the pair, I noticed they were both bigger than I was—much bigger, but I hadn't even noticed it be­fore.

  "So scram," I growled. "We'll get there when we're dressed, and that will be sooner if you get out of here."

  The two exchanged glances, looked back at me, and winked out as they slid, presumably back to Heimdall.

  I put my arms around Loragerd, who was shaking. Though the room was warm, I could feel her shivers and the goose bumps on her normally satin-smooth skin.

  We didn't say anything. What was there to say? We'd overslept when we should have been on duty. Junior Guards have very few rights.

  As we dressed, I thought Loragerd gave me an apprais­ing look, a strange sort of glance, but I could have been imagining it.

  She went to Linguistics, which was her permanent as­signment, and I made for Assignments.

  As I marched up the ramp from the West Portal of the Tower, I could sense a tenseness that tightened as I ap­proached the Assignments Hall.

  I could have cut the silence with a light saber, Frey's or anyone else's. Heimdall was slumped in his high stool, and the blackness poured from him like a river.

  As he caught sight of me, he straightened, opened his mouth as if to shout, then clamped it shut. He waited an instant, then began curtly.

  "Glammis was on Atlantea. Fifty centuries back. Locator tag wavered, just went blank."

  That meant the Locator console was receiving a signal, but not linked to Glammis's thought pattern, which meant she was dead, deep-stunned, or near death.

  I stared at Heimdall. The whole morning made sense. If there'd ever been anyone Heimdall was close to, it had to have been Glammis, the slight woman with the stern face and dark curly hair. Why had Glammis been on Atlantea? She usually presided over the machine shop's daily operations with an iron hand. Baldur supplied the philosophy, Glammis the work.

  She seldom went into the field, but Baldur had men­tioned that she'd once been considered a crack diver, cen­turies ago.

  "You want me to bring her back?"

  He nodded. I understood. Heimdall wanted ability, not just any diver. So Heimdall had sent his troopers after me.

  "Information?" I snapped. I had a couple of units, if that.

  "End console."

  If I hadn't known Heimdall better, I would have sworn the iron Guard's voice was ready to crack.

  In a funny way, I had to admire him. If it had hap­pened to Loragerd, I'd have gone off half-cocked no matter what. Heimdall knew his limits, understood he couldn't rescue Glammis, and had to stand by helplessly as he tried to round up help.

  Glammis's mission had been simple, according to the console. The mid-island people of fifty centuries earlier had developed a broadcast power transmitter. The results were strange, to say the least, since the output at the re­ceiver was greater than the input. But for reasons unclear in the surveillance reports, the project had failed when the generator quit producing power and later exploded.

  Glammis had been so intrigued with the possibilities, considering that power is one of our main problems, that she had decided to make the dive herself. Wasn't too sur­prising, when I thought about it. Divers who understood mechanical theory were few and far between.

  I got the directional output from the console and headed for the Travel Hall.

  No waiting for languages, cosmetics, or special equip­ment—I threw on a stunner, equipment belt, and wrist bands and dived.

  A fast recovery, if at all. I wasn't happy about it. Mes­sengers who confirm bad news are likely to become the recipients of gratuitous violence.

  Atlantea was a strange planet, although every planet has some peculiarities. Atlantea has shallow seas and metallic deposits, with no moons and no tidal forces to speak of.

  The combination's not supposed to occur, but that's the way it was.

  And Glammis was down.

  I red-flashed the back trip, homing in on Glammis's sig­nal from her Locator tag and power packs.

  Sometimes the line between death and unconsciousness is terribly fine. If Glammis died, subjective time, before I had dived clear of Quest, she was dead, but if there was any spark, she had an outside chance.

  I was aiming for a break-out point right at the instant her Locator signal had shifted from active to passive. A risk, but probably worth it.

  Undertime doesn't really have a color, but it feels gray, and your vision is limited. You can see "outside," the real objective time, but it's muddled, like looking up from beneath the water, silvered over and wavering, with flashes of light darting across your field of vision like minnows.

  Time tension, like water tension, exists at the moment of break-out when you are showered with a spray of mo­ments that slide off you with the emotional shock of icy rain.

  Except this time I bounced back undertime as soon as I broke-out, my head reeling with the impression of time mirrored in time. I slid sideways fractionally and came out in a corridor.

  The stench was ozone. The building atmosphere spelled out "powerplant."

  The directionals on the wrist gauntlets pointed toward a door closed and barred. The bar had melted, in effect welding itself to the frame.

  No one was around.

  The feeling of time being warped grew as I walked up to the door. I grabbed the crossbar and dived. The bar came with me; the doorframe didn't. That's how the Law of Discrete Particles works. If the bar had been the same material as the frame, nothing would have happened.

  I still couldn't slide or dive into the room, for whatever reason. I broke-out, dropped the bar, forced open the door—it was a sliding type that had a tendency to jam—and walked into the generator room.

  The place was a mess. Two control stations were a fused mass, and I didn't need more than a quick glance to see that the two controllers were dead.

  With the currents of time swirling around me, it took every bit of concentration to walk across the ceramic floor to the dark-haired woman sprawled on her back. She was alive and breathing. But her mouth hung open, and her wide green eyes were empty.

  I picked her up, hoping she didn't have any physical in­juries, and caught the time-tide swirling out of the generat­ing equipment to throw us undertime and fore-time toward Quest.

  I suspected that Glammis had literally lost her mind, but I'd leave that determination to the medical techs.

  Rather than trying to make a dive and a separate slide, I broke-out with Glammis right in the Infirmary. I stag­gered into the critical care section as Hycretis came run­ning.

  Hycretis devoted his attention to Glammis, as if I weren't even there.

  I stood there dumbly for a long moment, wondering why the room was vibrating, before I understood my legs were shaking. I plopped down on the edge of a vacant bed at the end of the ward and closed my eyes.

  "Damn you, Loki! Damn you!"

  I felt myself being shaken like a rag doll. Was it a night­mare? I tried to roll over in the bed, but the buffeting wouldn't go away.

  "What did you do? God you would be, Loki, and de­prive me of my only joy! Torment me, would you, young god, with an empty shell?"

  Like a slowing top, the universe began to settle, and I woke up fully to find Heimdall grabbing my harness, shaking me, and screaming, tears streaming from his eyes, and saliva drooling from the corners of his mouth.

  "Answer me! Answer me, would-be god!"

  Heimdall slapped my face, and this time it hurt.

  He had me just by the harness. I slid behind him with a quick dive barely under the tension of the "now." He was still holding an empty harness and staring at the vacant space where I had been when I cracked him a solid one from behind. He went down like a breaker, foaming at the mouth, but out. Out cold.

  "Wouldn't you say that Heimdall was suffering from strain?" I asked Hycretis.

&n
bsp; Both Hycretis and the two storm troopers holding him appeared stunned, for some reason.

  "Let him go." I gestured at the two Guards.

  They released their hold on the medical tech, but he didn't say anything.

  "I think Heimdall was under too much stress," I an­nounced, "and that all he really needs is a good rest."

  I turned to the two thugs. "You two watch Heimdall and make sure his rest isn't troubled by anyone—except maybe the Tribunes."

  That would occupy them for a while.

  "Hycretis, give Heimdall a muscle relaxant or whatever you deem suitable, and maybe a mild sedative."

  This time my words registered, and he nodded.

  I checked the objective time. Seemed like I'd been gone forever, but the wall clock said one hundred units elapsed from the moment I'd left the Travel Hall. I'd have bet ninety units had been my sleep recovery time.

  "Glammis?" I asked Hycretis.

  "Physically, fine. Her mind's wiped clean. How I don't know. Thought patterns of practically an unborn child."

  The Glammis we knew was gone. Heimdall had been right.

  "Did you tell Heimdall?"

  "How could I not tell him?"

  I thought about the two thugs guarding Heimdall's bed. Right. How could he not?

  Another question was why I hadn't noticed how Heim­dall was employing his private army. That could wait.

  I knew the answer to the power problem Glammis had been investigating, I thought. Baldur would know if I was right.

  I went down the ramps to Maintenance not quite at a run.

  Baldur glared at me as I stood respectfully outside his area, taking deep breaths, waiting, and refusing to go away.

  "All right." He touched a stud on his console. "What is it?"

  I recounted my travels to Atlantea, from the funny generating room where I'd rescued Glammis to the time currents and my diving difficulties.

  " ... and I don't have a thing to go on, but if I had to guess, I'd say they're tapping the time-tides and wrenching time out of its flow."

  When I began, Baldur had a half-bemused, let's-humor-Loki look on his face. By the time I finished, he was running his stubby fingers through his white-blond hair. He did that when he was excited. "Fascinating concept, fasci­nating, but dangerous. Let me think about it, Loki. Let me think about it."