The Fires of Paratime

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Gurlenis was another question.

  Giron had fetched me up to Assignments for Heimdall. Heimdall never came down for me himself, which was just as well for both of us.

  "Sammis thought you might like an easy assignment, for once," Heimdall announced.

  I wondered what the catch was. I seldom saw any as­signment that was easy.

  "No catch, none whatsoever," persisted the Counselor with the long black hair. "Data is on the end console."

  "Assignment?" I asked before heading over to the console.

  "Holo update before a cultural change."

  That translated into getting holo frames of a time/locale just before the Guard meddled. I asked myself what the Gurlenians had done to merit the Tribunes' decision to alter their culture, but didn't vocalize the question. In­stead, I walked over to the stool in front of the indicated console and keyed in.

  Gurlenis was an Arm planet, orange sun, low hills bronzed with grass, symmetrical cities built with a green glass that held the light for hours past sunset.

  Heavy transport was conducted with a sub-surface in­duction rail network or by solar wind-powered craft that skimmed the shallow seas. The people who built it all were bipeds, covered with a fine bronze-green fur that streamed behind them in the continuing and gentle winds. The reason for the mission, and the cultural alteration, was one publication by a scholar.

  The Archives evaluated the contents and predicted that the probability of the Gurlenians developing time-diving abilities approached unity, given further development. In short, the Gurlenians would challenge the Guard's monop­oly of Time.

  A Guard named Zealor had been assigned the alteration. All I had to do was record the last moments of the existing culture, the moment of passage, and the results.

  I made sure I had the nav coordinates down before I left Assignments. Heimdall didn't look up.

  Zealor had already left to start his work. So I headed straight for Special Stores to pick up the recording equip­ment.

  Halcyon was the Assistant Supervisor at Special Stores, and I thought Athene relied more on her than any of the earlier assistants. Like Loragerd, she'd been a trainee with me, but she'd never developed much beyond rote time-diving. She could dive anywhere she'd been taken, but couldn't strike out on her own, even with detailed in­structions.

  I guessed Baldur had gotten to all of us in that group of trainees, though I would have been hard-pressed to ex­plain it. Halcyon had taken special care to upgrade the equipment they supplied, and that was important, not so much to me, but to the others. Anyway, Athene was lucky to have Halcyon handling the day-to-day stuff for her.

  Halcyon was wailing. "Nicodemus said you'd be the one, and that you'd be in a hurry." She handed me a set of what looked like goggles. "Try these."

  The gadgets had a thin cable which led to a belt pack. I struggled to make the goggles fit, but with them in place, I couldn't see.

  "Silly," she murmured. "You wear them above your eyes."

  Halcyon had long, fine blond hair, green eyes so dark they verged on black, and clear tanned skin. Her voice tended to break slightly when she was amused, and she giggled, even after all those years.

  "Why?" I asked as I wrestled the goggles onto my fore-bead.

  "Simplest spacing to get an eyewitness view, I'd bet." I strapped on the belt-pack, smiled at Halcyon, and headed for the Travel Hall and Gurlenis to make the last record there might be of an entire world culture before Zealor reoriented it.

  I strapped on gauntlets and equipment, not that I thought I'd need them, and dived to Gurlenis. I didn't follow time-paths, but skipped branches and intuited my way to the destination. Break-out on Gurlenis found me hovering over bronzed hills bathed with light from the orange sun. Late afternoon, I guessed, and the read-outs confirmed that local season was late summer.

  Picking a low hill above the nearest city, I made sure the holo "goggles" were in place and glided down to the hilltop, panning the valley as I did, and ending with a view of the green glass city at the other end of the grassy lands that rilled the valley.

  From outside the tall evergreens that edged the city, I could see that the place was a town, rather than a city, and laid out in a definite plan.

  The first close-up I caught with the holo showed three youngsters playing on a triangular grass court of some sort. On each corner of the playing surface stood a tall pole with a balanced crossbar, and three metallic rings of varying sizes. Apparently the idea was to throw an oblong object through one of the rings in some pre­determined order. I watched.

  The smallest youngster, and I guessed he or she or it was young because of the size differential and an air, a feeling, that I associated with growing up, moved toward one of the corner standards in a hop-step-step-step-hop pattern. The other two tried to block the advance by anticipating where the patterned zigzig would lead and setting themselves in a blocking stature. No physical con­tact took place, and it was more like a dance.

  A couple of body lengths out from the corner standard, the one carrying the oblong made a double hop and tossed it toward the standard. I thought the crossbar swung be­fore the toss was completed. The vanes fluttered, but there was no wind.

  The oblong tumbled through the middle ring and was recovered by the tallest, who began moving toward the corner away from me in another stylized pattern, more of a hop-hop-step-hop-step.

  The game, if that was what it was, seemed strangely non-competitive, but I wondered about that crossbar moving without wind. I kept the holo going until the tape contained a representative section of the game.

  I slipped undertime toward the more heavily structured center of the town. All the Gurlenians I saw and caught on the holo radiated an impression of purposefulness, but the town was quiet, much quieter than I expected, even considering the attitude of gentleness I had begun to associate with the bronze-furred Gurlenians.

  The town stood on a low plateau and from the gradual slope down and into the cropped and cultivated spaces below, it was obvious that the Gurlenians planned their environment carefully. The town center was linked and intertwined with grassy paths. The more heavily traveled routes were paved with a soft green pebbled pavement that gave underfoot.

  Even as I watched and recorded, kept cranking away, I noticed that the number of Gurlenians out and about was shrinking. Strange, I thought, because with their wide eyes and lithe bearing, I would have suspected them to be a nocturnal race.

  I flicked in and out of the undertime, flashing through the corners of the city, trying to pinpoint activity. As I slid from place to place, something began to nag at me.

  As I stopped to holo a scene of the Gurlenians filing into a central structure, I recognized the feeling, or rather the absence of a feeling. Fear—the Gurlenians didn't demonstrate any signs of it.

  In most cultures, somewhere, someplace, there is an aura of fear. But not on Gurlenis. Most races are at least subliminally aware of being studied or looked at—and react. Either the Gurlenians weren't aware or it didn't bother them.

  I shelved that analysis as I began to take stock of the number of graceful souls gliding into the building I was observing. My first thought was a government or town meeting. My second was a religious observance, but I wasn't sure either fit.

  Curiosity cornered the lion. I ducked undertime and slid into the temple. Fuzzy as it was in the undertime, I didn't want to break-out inside a wall or a heat-source. Those hurt. I located an open space away from the assem­bling group and broke-out, ready to dive, if necessary.

  Face-to-face with me was a Gurlenian, an older one with white-streaked and flowing body hair and a mantle of age wrapped around his very being. The old Gurlenian looked at me, not at all surprised, bowed slightly, made some cryptic gesture in the air with a single sweeping motion, and waited. After that gesture, I received a feeling of peacefulness, and that was the only way I could de­scribe it.

  I nodded back, and slid undertime into a darker corner of the meeting hall where I k
ept the holo tape running.

  Row after row of Gurlenians were seated on wide and flat cushions, all equally spaced. The entire hall was dead silent, yet filled with the same feeling of peace I had received from the old Gurlenian.

  Why was I the one with the holopak? Sammis thought I'd like an easy assignment, and Heimdall had given it to me. Why?

  I didn't have time for more reflection, because the cold wind of time-change blew, creeping up my spine like the paralysis that followed the sting of a rocksucker.

  My head began to spin, and like a picture seen through falling water in the twilight, the temple melted around me. The building evaporated in mist, and the Gurlenians, dressed only in golden, fine-flowing hair, who had been seated within body lengths of me instants before became smoke, and then less than the memory of smoke. They were gone.

  The chill of the time-change-winds howled past me and barked their way down the trail to the future, leaving me standing on a rocky outcrop. I gazed out over sparsely vegetated hills and wild grasses. A few scraggly bushes had replaced the cultured and trimmed conifers. With the abrupt drop in temperature, I shivered. Some animal howled in the distance.

  No more Gurlenians. They were gone, for good, and I could feel it. That wasn't quite it. Rather, they and their sense of peace had never been, and Gurlenis was now a wild planet.

  I touched the stud on the belt-pack to stop the holos, lifted the goggles, and dropped them into a belt pouch.

  I slid back to the Travel Hall. It was deserted. I stowed my equipment in my own chest, including the holo equip­ment. I figured to return it the next morning, except for the holo frames themselves.

  The Tower itself was empty, except for the trainee watch staff, and I could hear my steps echoing in the silence as I climbed the ramps.

  The Assignments Hall was dark except for the small light at the main console, being used by the figure in Heimdall's stool.

  "Sammis, what are you—"

  "Told Heimdall I'd wait for you to return. How did it go?"

  "Fine, if you care for that sort of thing."

  I didn't care much what I said. Sammis wasn't likely to repeat it.

  He smiled, I'd have to have said sadly, if I were forced to analyze it, and answered, "Sometimes, that's the way it goes."

  I dropped the holo tapes, said good night, and left, wondering about Sammis—why was he there? But I was too depressed to think it over.

  I slid straight out to the Aerie, where it was still light. There I sat on the edge of my cliff, warmed by my glowstone floor, sipped firejuice, and saw the eagles circle, far from the Tower, far from Quest.

  The impact of the eradication of the Gurlenians wasn't going to vanish, no matter how long I stared out the per­maglass of the Aerie at the eagles of night, no matter how many busted pieces of equipment I fixed, no matter how much I learned about mechanical theory in an effort to avoid reality.

  And how many others bad we wiped clean from the slate of time? I knew about those that had impinged on me—Gurlenis, the shark cluster, and a few others like Ydris. But how many had there been?

  The Archives Data Banks had the information, I was certain. But the results of my last attempt to access his­torical data, when the entire Guard knew I was trying to find Baldur, indicated that the Tribunes or Heimdall, or someone, was following my every move. After all those years? Probably, I decided. Patience had to be a virtue learned by the powers that were of an Immortal society.

  Real analytical thinking had always been difficult for me, unlike Ferrin or Sammis. If I were Ferrin and wanted to find out information without broadcasting my interest, how would I go about it? That was the question. How did the Tribunes know who accessed data? The last time, they'd simply asked for copies of the requests off my per­sonal code.

  As I'd discovered in my brief time in Personnel, not many cross checks were used. As a matter of fact, Heim­dall or someone else was still making Maintenance per­sonnel ratings in my name. The simplistic answer was not to use my own code, but another Guard's. The next ques­tion was whose and how to get it.

  I tilted my stool back, letting my thoughts ferment, and watched the eagles soar in the twilight. They flew with such little effort, a flap here or there, riding the thermals.

  Ask someone? Nope, had to be sneaky. How about microsnoops?

  Where? Suppose I planted one focused on each console screen used by a Guard whose code I wanted? If I ob­tained ten codes, or at the fewest, the codes of four or five individuals whose request for trend data might not seem strange, I thought I could obscure what I was after. I had enough microsnoops in my collection. All I had to do was check them out, plant them, and collect the data.

  The next afternoon, I rounded up ten snoops from the bottom of my Maintenance locker, fitted them with wider angle lenses, and gave them a thorough check-out. Since I couldn't back- or fore-time on Query itself, I had two choices—either to mosey into each of the areas over the coming days and place them in broad daylight, so to speak, or use the undertime to flash-through during periods when the spaces were empty.

  The first alternative, while superficially attractive—no cloak and dagger sliding around in the dark of night—had a few drawbacks. How was I going to plant a snoop on or near someone's personal screen while he happened to be using it?

  Number two didn't appear much better. If anyone were naturally suspicious, and a lot of people seemed to be, wouldn't they have hidden remote sensing devices to moni­tor their work areas?

  When I'd joined the Guard, I never would have con­sidered that the honorable Counselors and Tribunes might have snoops in their Halls. After my experiences, I won­dered how they could avoid it, since they had to know that the strongest divers could slide undertime within the Tower itself.

  I sat there on my high-backed stool, ignoring the day's pile of repairs, including the ones I hadn't made, trying to come up with another alternative. I didn't. If anything at all went wrong while I attempted to place snoops during working hours, I'd be caught red-handed, and then some. On the other hand, with a flash-through night slide, I might end up as a picture on a holo screen, but I wouldn't be caught immediately—just the next morning. That wasn't any help. What if I didn't look like me? That was an idea worth pursuing. In the dimmer light after hours, a general suggestion of someone else might well do the trick.

  That conclusion led to another series of questions, but in the end only one pseudo-identity made much sense, because he was roughly my size and his mannerisms were easily counterfeited, especially his outfit.

  Nightmail is easily procured, even black nightmail, from the deep storerooms. At one time many of the Guards used it. While I couldn't obtain a light saber, I could duplicate its silhouette and exterior appearance easily enough with materials right at my own workbench. A dark cloak, a big black chain, black high boots, a swagger, and who would know I wasn't Frey? That left one screen key to get, Frey's own in Locator/Domestic Affairs. I would have to use the direct approach there.

  The night I picked, the planting went as smoothly as a dive to Haskill. Flick undertime, then out, place the snoop, ruffle through papers and drawers, clink the nightmail, and disappear.

  I got snoops into Heimdall's console, and those of Nicodemus, Ferrin, Tyron, Verdis, and even the one Odinthor used infrequently, planting the last one in Spe­cial Stores for good measure.

  I slid away from the Tower wearing the outfit and tucked it away in an abandoned section of an orbit weather station. I didn't want to fore- or back-time because it would show on the locator console if I was being monitored. My Queryan locale couldn't have been followed unit by unit. In a few days, I'd need the outfit to recover all my snoops.

  I could have tried the type that broadcast, but with all the energy flows around the Tower, I wasn't sure how they'd work, and I'd need special equipment to receive the data and store it. The self-contained types were less likely to be detected, easier to operate, and had no overt ties to me. The ones I placed looked like rivets, rai
sed plates, that sort of technical stuff.

  The morning after I planted the snoops, my ears were wide open, alert to any change of pulse around the Tower, but nothing seemed to have changed. No one was wander­ing around asking, "Did you hear that someone was snooping around the Tower last night?"

  In some ways, it was an anticlimax. I buried myself back in the little world of Maintenance, worried about divers' gear, fixed warm-suits, power packs, stunners, gauntlets, and the usual dents and dings. A good ten-day passed before I could plant a snoop on Frey's console, and I practically had to pick an argument with him to do it.

  On that morning, I loitered my way past his archway, and if anyone had asked me why I was on that side of the Square and not in Maintenance, I'd have been hard-pressed for an answer that made sense. I always had trouble coming up with out-and-out lies.

  Frey was in, toying with his black light saber, obviously bored. His boredom could be laid at Tyron's arch. Tyron couldn't dive worth a damn and made up for it by doing both his work and Frey's.

  Frey was the chief constable of Query by virtue of being the Supervisor of the Guard's Domestic Affairs/Locator branch, a cut and dried operation, no discretion, few and absolute rules under the Code.

  I ambled in. "Got an instant?"

  "Infinity and some." He flipped back as he sheathed the light saber and sat up straight on the work stool.

  "Why don't we put trainees into Domestic Affairs earlier in training? They'd understand how the system works better and the real role of the Guard would be clearer."

  He leaned forward and put both elbows on the table, crowding me back and away from the console screen.

  "Loki, the system's worked fine for umpteen hundred centuries. Let's not meddle with a good thing."

  "We lose a lot of trainees who opt out for the Admin obligation."

  "No guts," snorted Frey,