The Fires of Paratime

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  As far as he was concerned, I had ceased to exist. Baldur was back in his world of numbers and concepts.

  While I was deciding what I ought to do, I walked back over to my own work space and began to finish cleaning and running maintenance checks on a faulty copier that Frey had brought down from the Domestic Affairs weapons storeroom.

  The duplicator wasn't faulty. Frey was. He'd tried to copy some sort of hand weapon with power cells in place. Luckily, the power pack had been almost drained, or Hycretis would have been scraping Frey and his light saber off the nearest wall.

  Boring—that's what it was. In spite of the light pouring in from the long windows and the airiness provided by the high ceilings, milling out the melted junk and replacing the circuits one by one was a tedious task.

  All in all, I enjoyed being able to fix things, seeing a pile of metal turned back into a functional machine. As Baldur had pointed out, repairs were usually more efficient than sending trainees and junior Guards all over time to pick up more and more hardware.

  As I finished the copier and rolled it back to the front where Frey's flunkies would pick it up, I realized someone was standing in the shadows.

  Loragerd. After the Glammis pickup, the incident with Heimdall, Baldur's comments, she'd slipped my mind.

  "Are you all right?" she asked as I came up.

  I could feel my throat tighten. Here she was, waiting for me, after having been pawed, assaulted, and forgot­ten—asking how I was.

  What could I say? I just shook my head and held her, tightly.

  "Loki." She leaned back and wiped my cheeks. "I'm fine, just fine. Heimdall was after you, worried about Glammis. You handled everything except you. Freyda came and told me to take off early and find you. I did."

  I couldn't say anything. What could I say?

  After my first fling with Freyda, our relationship had cooled, but she still worried. Imagine, sending Loragerd to look after me.

  Imagine, Loragerd caring how I was. Me?

  Ridiculous. Except I stood there in the afternoon shad­ows of the ancient and time-protected machines holding Loragerd and shaking.

  We had a short dinner at Hera's before going back to my rooms.

  All night long, I kept waking up, wondering if someone would appear out of nowhere and grab me. Loragerd slept better, I think.

  On that long night, with my arms around Loragerd, wondering about the chain of tomorrows that loomed ahead, I kept recalling the shock of the morning. Seemed longer before than the same morning.

  I was going to get a place, even if I had to build it stone by stone, that no one could slide into. Thinking that, know­ing it would be so, in the early morning silence, I drifted into sleep and did not wake again until the wake-up chimed.

  Loragerd and I had some juice, some fruit, and dressed.

  She left for the Linguistics Center before I was quite to­gether, but within units I was headed for Maintenance. I made the Tower in a quick slide and hustled down the ramps from the West Portal to see what Baldur had come up with.

  From the look of his area, he'd been there all night. The circles under his eyes were blacker than ever, but he gave me a smile. "Most intriguing problem, most intriguing, Loki, but I suspect a self-resolving one."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I've checked the files. Glammis located this device fifty centuries back, and the records show the station was aban­doned. Obviously, it was unsuccessful. The Atlanteans suc­ceeded in transferring some energy across time. I've postu­lated a theoretical basis for the mechanism."

  "I'm lost," I admitted.

  He beamed faintly because I'd pursued the question. "If your conjecture is correct, and I suspect it is, the total of mass and energy, energy really, since mass is a stabilized form of energy, and that's simplifying it grossly, does not need to be constant.

  "The Atlantean powerplant was diverting energy from the nearer time levels. That was why you couldn't dive into the area immediately around the generator."

  Baldur stopped and gestured an end to his response, lifting his bushy blond eyebrows as if the conclusion were evident.

  I didn't feel like guessing.

  "And?"

  "There is a definite limit to the energy easily available to the generator. Within a few years, seasons, perhaps days, the generator will stop delivering power. It's really an en­ergy concentrator more than a generator."

  "The damned thing will quit by itself?"

  "Right. And ... " Baldur launched into a detailed ex­planation of how and why which I listened to with my thoughts elsewhere. I'd have to go back and check the Atlantean generator over a period of years before making a final report.

  I've always disliked loose ends.

  After that I was going to discover the location I'd visual­ized for my private retreat—where Heimdall and his thugs couldn't track me down.

  Baldur wound up his technical dissertation.

  "Then I'll dive back and check out your theory."

  "You doubt everyone, don't you."

  I grinned. He'd caught me out.

  Baldur dismissed me, and I marched up the ramps to the Travel Hall. I should have checked in with Assignments, but I could claim I was acting under Baldur's orders if anyone complained.

  Ten years fore-time from my pickup of the disminded Glammis, I came across not a malfunctioning power plant, nor an empty structure, but a fused and leveled pile of rubble, glazed over as if by a tremendously hot energy source.

  I tried to locate the exact point of destruction, but couldn't. In one instant, five years objectively after Glam­mis's near demise, the complex stood, vacant and non­functional. In the next unit remained only the glazed pile of junk.

  No matter how I concentrated in the undertime, I couldn't identify that fraction of a unit when the destruction occurred. Between two instants in the undertime, I could only sense what I'd call a vortex, a whirlpool of time, an instantaneous unleashing of power striking from between the threads of time, yet a power totally separated from the Time surrounding those instants.

  I recorded the results on the portable holo unit I'd carted along for the purpose and dived back to the Travel Hall.

  A few trainees were popping in and out of the Hall, but no one I had to account to.

  I took the holo unit and cornered Baldur, not that it was hard because he seldom left Maintenance during the day.

  "Not surprised," he commented tersely, for once trying to get rid of me. He'd solved the problem. I was the doubter. "Time recoil, showing the limits to which energy can be transferred."

  I wandered back to my own area, thinking it over. I didn't understand the why of it, but that's the way time is. You can only bend it so far before it strikes back.

  Ferret-face was waiting for me.

  I glared at him. He cowered. Damned if I knew why. He was an experienced Temporal Guard with the power of Heimdall behind him.

  "Heimdall would appreciate seeing you in the Assign­ments Hall."

  I wondered about Ferret-face's politeness, but that's not the sort of question you can ask.

  Heimdall was back behind his desk, as if nothing at all had happened the day before. His eyes were a bit blood­shot. That was all. Intent as I was on Heimdall, I over­looked Freyda at first. She was standing a few steps to the left of Heimdall.

  "Honored Tribune, Counselor." I gave them both a half-bow.

  Heimdall pointed to the chair on the platform next to his console. I plunked myself into it. Freyda sat down next to Heimdall.

  Heimdall nodded at Freyda, deferring. She accepted whatever invitation it was and began. "Commendation for your recovery of Glammis. While she will need a total re­education, there was no lasting physical or genetic damage.

  "Second, the Counselors have recommended that you be assigned to take over as assistant supervisor of Main­tenance. Glammis will not be able to resume her duties for some time."

  Brother, was that an understatement. Glammis would take years to recover her sk
ills, and there was no guarantee the stimuli of her second childhood would lead her down the same mech-oriented path as her first.

  Although Baldur would continue as the overall supervisor of Maintenance, I'd have much wider latitude—and more to do. The whole thing also demonstrated the thinness of the pool of Guard with mechanical talents.

  I thanked both Heimdall and Freyda for their con­fidence, vowed to follow the high standards of tradition, bowed, and was dismissed.

  Back down the ramps to Maintenance I ambled, musing over the latest turn of events.

  The first thing to do was to move into Glammis's old spaces. Several days passed before I was satisfied with the results. By that time the repairs had piled up, and that meant working late for a good ten-day. I didn't feel that should be a permanent state of affairs.

  Baldur agreed. "What do you suggest?"

  "That you request the trainee with the best mechanical aptitude from the current third-year class for a hundred units a day."

  "Fifty," replied Baldur.

  "I'd also suggest more routine maintenance help from the second-year trainees, like you used to require."

  "If you want to run the operation, fine."

  Surprisingly, Heimdall agreed.

  Narcissus was the third-year trainee, and I ended up by giving him the same spiel Baldur had fed me—except I wasn't quite so successful.

  "You seem awfully sure, Loki, and I guess I believe you," was Narcissus's reaction.

  I must have had some reaction to his doubts. He gave me the strangest look.

  "I believe you. I believe you."

  I admitted to myself that I wanted to tweak him with a thunderbolt to get my point across, but I didn't believe I'd considered such a drastic alternative seriously.

  That spring plodded along into summer before I got things running the way I wanted, before I had much free time for my second and more personal project—locating a site for my own personal retreat.

  I must have looked at every cliff ledge in the Bardwalls before I settled on a location. I'd figured out what I'd needed before doing my surveying. The location had to be physically inaccessible except through an undertime slide right inside the structure. I intended to build the exterior stone by stone in order to put it out-of-time-phase—like the Tower of Immortals itself. That way only someone with innate directional senses and the ability to dive into an out-of-phase building could get there.

  I settled on a site under the peak called Seneschal, a small ledge jutting from a sheer cliff. Although Seneschal is a quarter of the way around the planet from Quest, I figured I could cope with the sun and time differential.

  Construction wasn't what I'd expected. My father had built his own home, and if he had, I knew I could. But I might not have been so eager, not if I'd known the years it would literally take.

  Each heavy chunk had to be quarried, cut, and trans­ported by hand with a time-slide to the site of my Aerie. Aerie, that was what I decided to call it, perched as it was over a sheer drop from the needle peaks to the canyons deep below, nestled over the lightning storms that blasted the lower levels of the deep valleys.

  During the days, I worked at trying to increase the ability of Maintenance to do more repairs. While it was too early to draft him, I had my eye on a second-year trainee named Brendan, who had a sense for mechanics. In the interim, I struggled with the overflowing repair bin, and with Narcissus, who had the unnerving habit of polishing metal to look at his reflection, rather than to clean it for repairs.

  Both Maintenance and the Aerie struggled along.

  I wasn't building a castle on the heights. The Aerie was scarcely that—just two levels, three rooms, plus a kitchen and a hygienarium. The structure was what took the ef­fort, especially warping each stone, each beam, out of time. It was worth it. On the evening when I moved in the last of the furnishings, stood on the glowstone flooring, and watched the sunset below, I swallowed hard to try to push down the lump in my throat.

  I had built something lasting, something of beauty, and with my own hands. My own hands—that was important.

  IX

  In the midday sun, a dwelling crouches in an overgrown meadow, its back to a dry creek bed. On the far side of the dry gulch, a forest begins.

  The blotchiness of the unfinished wood and the dusty permaglass testify that the dwelling is vacant. Tattered lynia flowers droop their violet fronds across the barely visible stones of the walk, those that the moss has not al­ready crept over.

  A breeze whispers its course across the open ground with the restrained promise that it will whistle when the clouds now hugging the horizon arrive later in the after­noon.

  From thin air, a young man wearing a one-piece black jumpsuit appears in front of the structure.

  He gawks at the building, at the dust-streaked panes, the overgrown stone walk which leads nowhere, as if he had not expected the desertion.

  After a moment of hesitation, he walks briskly up the low steps to the porch and the door.

  "Greetings!" he bellows. A gust of wind heralding the clouds in the distance ruffles his bright red hair as he waits for a response.

  The arched door opens at his touch.

  He steps inside, and the hall echoes as his black boots strike the floor.

  The house, for it could be termed that despite the years of desertion, is small, with hygiene facilities and a pair of bedrooms on the upper level and three rooms on the main level.

  Dust blankets the simple furniture, the once-polished stone and wood floors that shine beneath the covering bestowed on them by time.

  So well-built and preserved is the structure that the dust seems out of place.

  The man in black, his face smooth and unlined enough to be scarcely more than a youth, tours the rooms in silence.

  He returns to the front hall, face blank, shaking his head.

  "Locator was right," he comments to no one because there is no one to hear him. "Totally vanished. Left every­thing, and didn't tell me. Not even a note."

  He shakes his head again.

  Then, after stepping onto the narrow stone front porch and carefully closing the heavy door behind him, he van­ishes into thin air.

  The clouds and rain have not yet arrived, but they will.

  X

  Maintenance could be a challenge, as well as a pain in the neck.

  The Guard attitude toward machinery made it difficult. Frey and his people were the worst. They used and abused equipment until it broke, pounded on it to see if it were truly broken, threw it in a storeroom or unused corner to gather dust until it was needed again, and then and only then carted it down to Maintenance with a request that it be repaired immediately.

  The first few times that happened I made the repairs without comment. The next dozen times, I grumbled, sug­gesting that Frey send equipment when it broke, rather than waiting.

  One fine winter morning, after a frost, when the air was clear and I had a breathing spell, I surveyed the Hall and watched Narcissus overpolish the sides of an auxiliary generator.

  Hopefully, I'd get less spit and polish and more repairs out of Brendan in the months ahead when he completed training. Once Brendan arrived as a permanent assignment, I'd see what could be done to track another trainee into Maintenance.

  In the meantime, I was struggling along under the repair burden and not diving nearly as much as I would have liked.

  As I was speculating about the future, Ferrin arrived with a set of battered Locator portapacks. Ferrin never carried gear down from Domestic Affairs.

  I smiled.

  "Oh, skilled god of forge and iron, of the fire and the energies that flow," began Ferrin lightly.

  Ferrin got fancy when he'd rather not be doing whatever he was engaged in.

  "Skip the rhetoric. What's the dirty work?"

  "Frey wants these immediately. No more than one hun­dred units. Need to track down a malefactor, and he's headed fore-time outline—beyond the finer capabilities of the base units. Reme
mber that Bly character? Some wom­an bushwhacked Hightel and Doradosi as they were bring­ing him back from Hell for a chronolobotomy."

  Bly? It took a moment before the name registered. And the woman who attacked Hightel and Doradosi had to be the one who had collapsed at Bly's hearing.

  "Ferrin ... how long have these been lying around in your storeroom not functioning?"

  I picked one up and blew a cloud of dust from it.

  "Couple years, probably."

  I slid off the stool, leaving the Locator packs on the bench, and marched across the Maintenance Hall. Baldur was in. I'd seen him earlier.

  "I've had it! Had it! This is the twenty-first time in the past three years Frey has done this. I've recommended, suggested, begged, pleaded—everything. Let him do his own repairs."

  "He doesn't know how," Baldur said calmly, as if he were used to Guards banging his workbench every day. "Glammis had the same problem, you know."

  I didn't understand. Baldur, of all Guards, should under­stand. He was the one who had taught me the value of maintenance, of care.

  "Are you unwilling to make the repairs?" cut in a new voice, and I knew it was Heimdall's from the tone of menace in the question.

  "No, honored Counselor," I replied, turning to face him and bringing my voice under control, "but I do feel that a disciplinary action should be brought against Supervisor Frey for the continued misuse of Guard resources."

  Ferrin's mouth dropped open. Heimdall was silent. Bal­dur smiled a smile so faint it wasn't.

  "We could take this up informally with one of the Tribunes," suggested Baldur. It wasn't a suggestion.

  Heimdall, who had appeared ready to speak, closed his mouth.

  The four of us marched up the two ramps from Main­tenance to the Tribunes' private Halls.

  Eranas invited us into a sitting chamber and summoned Frey.