The one frame I'd taken was stark enough, and ugly enough. The years of erosion, wind, rain, fires, and time itself had only blunted the edges of the 'black fortress. The Structure was a good kilo on a side, if not more, and nearly as high.
Black it was, so deep a black that there was light in the space between stars by comparison, black enough to swallow light. And old. That black monstrosity dripped years. The Tower of Immortals was built yesterday compared to the black fort.
I sat down on a grassy knoll of my rest planet and studied the frame again. Other details now stood out, like the laser which was sweeping toward the holo center, or the absolute smoothness of the plain.
I shivered. Big, strong Temporal Guards who could leap centuries with a single dive weren't supposed to shiver. I did.
What sort of mechanism was it that could last millennia and track and attack an object that appeared in real-time for only milliunits?
The first contact, strictly with an artifact, and it was hostile.
I forced myself to keep concentrating on the holo frame. The regularity of the distant hills behind the fortress, virtually all the same level, was another disturbing note. Sharks, shark people, staging base, sterile planets, weapons—they all ran through my mind. The sharks had been there longer than Sammis or Heimdall figured.
With a deep breath, I slipped through the mind-chill of the time-tension and headed back to the planet of the black fortress. I stayed in the undertime beneath the structure, grasping for a link, a direction. In a funny way, all created objects in the universe have time links, shadow paths, branches linking them with then: creators.
The black fort, staging base, whatever it was, had a thready link further back-time. I couldn't follow it because I was near the end of my own back-time range, but I grabbed a damned good feel for the direction, and I slid along the directional I'd picked up, keyed and ready for anything.
I could pick up the deadliness of the second contact from well beyond the system's geographical confines, a dark feel stronger than the Tower of Immortals.
I decided to call the shark planet Lyste, for reasons unclear even to me. Except that the Sertians have a god of destruction with the same name.
I set the holopak and made a flash-through of the system's fourth planet, the one that reeked of age and shark, and slid back to my bubble tent to survey the holo frame. The single frame displayed a perfectly cultivated row crop of some sort, not a single straggle of grass or weed showing. The second flash-through was aimed through what I figured from the undertime was a small city.
The holopak came up with two frames. The machinery was simple enough—late fossil fuel, but sophisticated, in an organic way. All I could pick out was a cart, apparently fueled by a stack of "logs" that seemed to be individual plants. Couldn't pick out any other overt machines. The "people" looked healthy, strong, and purposeful.
Semi-humanoid was as good a description as any—smooth black skin, hairless, scaleless, short and stocky pair of legs, upright carriage, two arms ending in a hand. That was all in the first holo frame.
The second holo frame had a detailed head-on picture of a "shark." I'd lingered a fraction of a unit to get that second frame, and that could have been a mistake.
The pedestrian marching down the street had seen me, recognized a threat, and turned in the space of less than a half unit. The reason the head-on shot was so clear was that he/she/it had been caught in the act of firing a hand-held dart gun. The dart was caught by the holo emerging from the end of the gun, and I had no difficulty in mistaking its barbed and hostile intent. As I sat on the grassy knoll, I shuddered. What was I getting into?
It was no fluke—they all had microunit reflexes.
Fine. I'd found the home planet, maybe. Now what?
I took another nap after I found myself shaking. Was sleep a way to escape? I didn't care, and when I woke maybe fifty units later, I munched my way through dried ration sticks, before considering my options.
I couldn't very well eliminate their progenitors. I was at the back-time limit of my range and, short of busting the planet, there wasn't any alternative.
Finally it jumped out of the pictures and pasted me between the eyes. Lyste was an old, old planet, probably gutted of easily mined minerals, fossilized hydrocarbons gone, and populated by a very direct and aggressive species.
I studied the holos more closely. In the next to the last one, I located what could be the object I was searching for. I climbed to my feet, tightened my equipment belt, reloaded the holopak, and slid back to Lyste for a closer shot of what appeared to be a black formation.
At the edge of break-out, I hesitated. Seemed stupid, but I had the feeling that something was waiting.
I got the holo frame, shot a second, and as I did, sensed an enormous surge of energy directed toward me. I tried to push it away and dive undertime at the same instant I threw up my arm as I penetrated undertime—not quickly enough. When my forearm shattered, I thought I screamed, but I couldn't hear anything in the undertime.
I didn't remember the dive back fore-time to Quest, just breaking-out in the Travel Hall and watching the glow-stones come up to my face.
Next thing I knew, I was propped up in the Infirmary with a regenerator covering one side and a mass of tubes hooked into me.
"Loki?" asked a voice.
Focusing was difficult, even though it was the second time I'd ended up like that, and it was a while before I decided the voice belonged to someone I knew.
"Loragerd?" I croaked. My throat felt like I'd been swallowing sand.
I couldn't hear the response, if there was one, couldn't see the formless faces, and fell, twisting through the nightmare country into a dark pit filled with shiny black shark people who swirled and gobbled and chomped, mostly on me, but on each other when they got tired of tasting me.
Later, and I had no idea how much later, I woke up to find a young Guard sitting across the room.
"Good morning, or is it good afternoon?" I asked.
He seemed surprised. "Morning, sir," he stammered.
"Loki," I corrected him.
"Yes, sir."
"So what's happened?" I asked, as if nothing in the world had gone wrong.
Immortals were like that, recovering quickly. I was weak, but I'd recover fully, no doubt about that.
"Tribune Freyda should answer that, sir."
He left, presumably to run down the honored Tribune.
Freyda arrived shortly. "All right, super hero, you've left us on blasts and bolts—"
"Did you leave me much choice?" I interrupted.
I was still sore about the situation, but she went on as if I hadn't said a thing.
"From your instruments, we figured you went back a million years, but the energy drain on the equipment shows two million. Locator pinned the spot, but no one can get anywhere close, and Eranas gave strict orders that no break-outs were to be tried until you were in shape to report."
She glared at me. "You realize that no one could have pulled you out if you hadn't staggered back under your own power?"
"Not till now." I grinned, but it felt lopsided.
"What's more, you couldn't possibly have survived the energy blast that your equipment says you took, but basically all your system damage was limited to your arm and some shock."
I had the feeling Freyda would have gone on and on, but I had to know. "Did the last holo frames come through?"
Freyda handed them over, as if she had been waiting for an explanation from me. I could feel my right arm shaking as I reached out. The left was in a cast, but felt like it was all there. That told me the regeneration had taken.
I spread the three frames across my lap. I was propped part way up and I could see them without straining.
The third shot literally showed raw energy and my forearm exploding in blood under the pressure. But the wave of energy, laser blast, particle beam, stopped cold at the forearm, and that shouldn't happen. Blood and gore could wait. Sho
ts one and two showed what I had been looking for, and afraid of finding. The installation, though more eroded, apparently deserted, matched the ancient fortress on the deserted planet, down to the flat plain in front of the towering black walls. The evidence, while not absolutely positive, was enough for me. The same culture built both.
The sharks on Lyste were avoiding the black fortress on their own planet, which indicated that the automatic defenses might not be terribly discriminating about who or what it zapped.
Freyda sat through my studies in silence, finally clearing her throat. "Unless you have objections, I would recommend an immediate sterilization of that planet."
"Whose murder or suicide?" I asked as brightly as possible with my sandy throat.
She looked at me, with the cold look that demanded an answer because she was Tribune. And who the Hell was I, anyway?
"Who can dive that far back? And if they don't, how are they going to get into real time without getting potted? I've found traces on more than one planet; so how do we know they're confined to just one point?"
Freyda digested my objections. "See what you mean. We'll wait until you're on your feet. Hycretis says ten days or so. Twenty until you're up to full speed."
"Twenty-five," I countered. I wasn't going back into that cluster until I was fully healed. Those people were mean.
In the days that followed, Heimdall, Freyda, and Odinthor kept traipsing into the Infirmary. I was a novelty. Very few seriously wounded divers got back. Guards avoided injury or were totalled.
They all agreed. A back-time sterilization was necessary, and an effective one at that. The question was how. Heimdall opted for genetic poisoning. Freyda wanted to nova the sun.
Odinthor wanted to send the whole Temporal Guard back with thunderbolts. "Do the Guard some good! Shake up these softies! Give 'em real field experience, that's what I say!" the old warrior insisted.
He conveniently forgot that he and I were the only ones with the time-diving range to get there or that he'd had to be led.
I didn't say much, preferring to listen, surprising for me. I wondered how many planets were inhabited by sharks, especially considering the two identical ancient forts.
Neither Loragerd nor Verdis came to see me, which surprised me in one way, but not in another, although I couldn't say why.
Hycretis booted me out of the Infirmary within six or seven days and told me to take it easy.
Brendan had done well in my absence, and outside of one or two ticklish jobs he'd left for me, Maintenance was current. Baldur hadn't been indispensable and, it appeared, neither was I. That must have pleased Heimdall no end.
Practically, however, the time came when I couldn't put off the resumption of my shark assignment.
"Fit as a thunderstorm, fire and flash, ready to go ... " was Hycretis's assessment.
Another trainee had been stationed at the Travel Hall to wait for me and was obviously instructed not to let me get away. He came tearing up as I stowed some of my equipment into my chest.
"Sir, the Tribunes request your presence."
"Now?"
I gathered all the holo frames and marched up to the public chamber of the Tribunes. Evidently, the trainee had scurried up before me. Freyda, Kranos, and Eranas were waiting.
"We would be most interested in your report, Loki," Eranas began.
I understood just how interested when Heimdall and Sammis arrived. I presented everything I had, not taking sides for or against destroying the sharks. I didn't have to, because if I didn't agree the Guard didn't have any way to proceed.
"I say destruction," Heimdall summed up his position.
Sammis didn't offer an opinion.
"Loki," asked Freyda from the low table where the three Tribunes sat, "have you any observations'?"
"Think they were once like us," I offered, "perhaps even related to or descended from the mythical forerunners. Now they rely on machines, but perhaps because time diving is so difficult."
I went on, avoiding the real question, pointing out that time-travel had led to a totally self-centered and ruthless race, one that destroyed others on sight, and one with little respect for their own wounded or disabled.
"May be," noted Kranos, "but that is not the question. Question is what you think we ought to do about it."
I consoled myself with the thought that I had given the sharks more chances than Heimdall or Freyda would have. But in the end, my verdict was the same.
"Destruction."
From there the discussion went into technical possibilities, none of which was workable.
I cut the debate and worthless solutions short. "Adaptation of the sun-tunnel."
Heimdall, the lover of destruction, got the idea right off. "Some sort of multiple linkage?"
I nodded, and everyone patted each other on the back and kept their distance from me.
I walked out while they talked, heading down the ramps to Maintenance. My idea was simple enough. Most destruction is just a matter of applying power in the right spots. The star cluster was tightly packed, with the density approaching, if not exceeding, that of galactic center.
I intended to plant linked sun-tunnels across cluster center, particularly in suns that seemed unstable, and by funneling energy flows, attempt to nova cluster center stars. From there, the process would feed on itself.
The whole process took Narcissus, Brendan, Elene, and me almost two seasons. And while the four of us worked, Heimdall and Freyda worried.
Near the end of that period, I went back to the cluster and collected real-time star shots to feed into the data banks. The Archives came up with a pattern for successive linkages that was supposed to guarantee destruction.
I had made a few adjustments to the pattern. I intended to touch off the stars of both Lyste and Lead Nine directly, which I thought would cut the risks considerably.
When the time came, I was sure I wanted to go through with it. The sharks deserved it, I thought, as much as anyone did, and the idea that such a predatory culture might survive to escape their cluster and infest our galaxy proper wasn't attractive. Neither was the thought that I was going to torch a cluster a million-plus years ahead of its normal destruction—if that destruction had been indeed normal. All told, I had to set up seventeen linkages, meaning thirty-four dives within a hundred and fifty unit period. Actually, two links and four dives, those for Lyste and Lead Nine, could be done outside the time parameters.
The last night before I left on my mission of fire, I sat in front of the permaglass in the Aerie and stared at the winter ice on Seneschal and the shadows between the peaks.
Morning came, and I dived deep to Azure. Once there, I took a nap before girding myself for the thirty-four dives that were to follow.
I did it. It was that simple. Thirty-four dives in time, dropping thirty-four time-protected packages into thirty-four suns. Then I strapped myself into deep-space armor, picked up a suitable holopak, and fore-timed a thousand years to see if my efforts had resulted in the required destruction.
They had.
A few white dwarves peered out from the swirling nebula composed of the remnants of the once-glittering cluster.
I ran back and picked up frames showing the pulse of destruction, the stellar winds pushing out ahead of the front of fire. What the recordings didn't show was the howling winds of time-change that echoed through the undertime and the anguish as planetary sentiences were snuffed out. While some of the sharks could have escaped in their time and space cruisers, I knew none had, just as I knew I could bend energy away from me.
When I hit the Travel Hall, one person was waiting. Heimdall. "Congratulations, Loki! Magnificent job!"
I knew the moaning change-winds had preceded me.
I nodded curtly, but said nothing. Right ... magnificent job. I had destroyed a hundred thousand systems a million years ahead of schedule and snuffed out who knew how many intelligent beings because I had no other way of dealing with the sharks. Magnific
ent, right?
I had to bite my tongue until the blood ran to keep from blasting Heimdall on the spot.
No one else was there to welcome back the god of destruction, the lord of fire. They knew me, knew me all too well, as I was coming to know myself.
I strolled through the corridors of the Tower, still fully equipped, wrist-gauntlets and all, taking it all in. Where I walked, Guards shrank, eased away as if I wore the very flames I had kindled, and perhaps I did.
Massive as it was, the Tower seemed small and tawdry in those moments, insignificant against the night skies I had left units before.
As I headed for the South Portal, even the visitors turned away. Since there was nothing to be accomplished by returning to Maintenance immediately—who would talk to me?—I spent the next ten-day at the Aerie and on the empty places of the high Bardwalls, watching the eagles, the clean lines of the knife-ice peaks, and the winding shadows of the clefts below.
XVI
The seasons passed. I kept to myself in Maintenance when I wasn't stalking thunderstorms in the passes of the Bard-walls or bending lasers into light sculptures around the Aerie.
Once in a great while, Loragerd and I got together, but the spontaneity we enjoyed as younger Guards had remained in the past, and we drifted apart on the gentle waves of the present. Heimdall assigned me missions, and Brendan, Narcissus, and Elene did most of the day-to-day work, while I dug into more theory from the Archives, and some history on the side.
If some idiot decided that core-tapping was all right and miscalculated, and pieces of real estate went flying all over creation, messing up orbits and incidentally ripping up any time-diver who was caught unaware, that was one thing. It may have been a tragedy, a disaster, but the planetary culture did it to themselves.
If the Guard saw a situation like that developing, the Tribunes tried to head it off. But the Guard could fail. That happened when Eranas was tracking the Nepturian Civil War.
The Centaurs said nay to the Queen of Semos. She got her back up and responded with the entire Fire Cavalry. A group of Centaurs dropped a hell-blaster down the core-tap rather than give in. I thought it was a pretty drastic response, but who was I to say, particularly after destroying an entire cluster to wipe out a few time-traveling sharks?
The Fires of Paratime Page 18