The Fires of Paratime

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  I shuddered, but I could not feel for those who had suffered—not and still redress the balance.

  Standing over the cliffs, my Aerie seemed poised over the canyon of destruction, but I knew it was all illusion.

  My power packs were dead, and I replaced them.

  My supply of miniature antimatter bombs was depleted, and I restocked.

  One gauntlet was fused, and the skin beneath red and tender, but I willed it to heal, and it did.

  I looked around my Aerie, my weapons' storeroom, cluttered and jumbled with implements of destruction, before setting out for the second wrench I would make in the machinery of time.

  I replaced the eternasteel tablets with their message, star chart, and formula in my carrying case and pulled on an­other gauntlet over my healed right wrist

  Three swigs of firejuice, a battle ration cube, and I was prepared to dive. Already I could sense the change-winds in the back distance over the curve of time, blowing to­ward the "now" of Query, and I knew I had much to do before they arrived with their messages.

  After a stint as the Lord of Destruction I would become the Lord of Creation, before I donned the mantle of the Lord of Destruction once again.

  I time-dived and slid down the black branches into the back-time, three hundred centuries or so, and out to Heaven IV.

  Heaven IV was not on the print-out I had gotten from the Data Banks. That alone might have kept Freyda, Eranas, Kranos, and Heimdall buffeting in the change-winds, even if they had gotten a copy of the list.

  I forced my way down the back-time-paths toward the planet of the angels, with a specific aim in mind—an angel nursery.

  Although the term nursery sounded formal, it wasn't, because the place was more of a sheltered cliff on one of the tallest peaks I'd ever seen, but overlooking, as al­ways, the goblins' Hell smoldering far below under the dark clouds and seething heat

  For the god of time and fire had come unto the place called Heaven, to take his due from the angels and from that mount where the children were gathered.

  Yet a single angel protested and raised his lance against the god of fire, and that angel was no more, for against the thunderbolts of the god he could not prevail.

  And from that place called Heaven the god of fire de­parted, time and time again, carrying the children, two by two, to a far planet, until gathered there were two score and more.

  And to guard them, against the cold and against danger, further provided were they with angels to succor them, for they grieved and their hearts were heavy, and they were alone.

  The planet on which I had placed those uprooted angels had a slightly heavier gravity than Heaven IV, and the atmosphere was thinner. Intelligent life had not yet evolved, but the biosystems were compatible.

  Statistically, a long-shot, but I knew it would work out. That is the business of gods.

  Flying would not work well, except for short distances, and more metal meant a tech culture.

  That I did not intend to leave to chance. I slid foretime on the first murmur of the second change-wind I had blown into our stuffy corner of the galaxy.

  Twenty centuries up were towns, small cities, and beasts of burden, fields, fires—enough for a first appearance.

  I lit up the sky at twilight over the square of a town, cast a few thunderbolts into the town center, and deposited a tablet.

  After repeating the performance over a more distant village, I then departed up the line.

  I did not expect much more from the change-wind, but the murmurs were louder as I rode forward, peering from the undertime at the changing surface of the planet

  At fifty centuries fore-time from the objective time of the transplant, I found ships upon the shallow oceans, and laden power wagons upon roads.

  And the fallen angels had prospered, but in their pros­perity had disregarded the words of their god and had taken up new ways, and sailed the seas in ships of metal and turned the soil with metal beasts, and had in truth forgotten their god.

  Yet he laughed, and his laughter shook the forests, and drew thunder from the skies.

  And the fallen angels stopped, and they listened, for they feared, for the sound was strange unto them.

  But the strangeness of that laughter did not turn them; they listened and did not hear.

  And their god was angered, and in his anger cast his thunderbolts upon the highways and upon the wagons that traveled them and upon the seas and the ships that sailed thereon, and put his mark upon the very stones of the hills ere he departed.

  He waited in the shadows of time unbeknownst, and bided his time until the millennium had come.

  For again, the people who had been angels had for­saken their god and were proud in their handiworks and in their contrivances, and raised their wings against their god.

  The god of fire strode across the heavens and flattened the cities, and struck the ships from the seas, even those which were mighty, and picked the ships of the air from the skies, and twisted the iron ways into forms that con­founded their makers.

  All that and more did the god of fire, who laughed at what he had wrought.

  For lo, the fallen angels did not cower, nor were they ashamed, nor were they filled with fear, but instead shook their wings against the sky and against the fires.

  And they seized the eternal tablets of the god and were filled with wrath, and in their hearts they plotted and directed their ways against the very stars.

  The winds of change wailed, and reached into the space beyond the firmament and behind the time and twisted both and brought chill and the cold that was beyond chill onto the gales that reached even unto the home of the god of fire.

  XX

  "So now you're a god?"

  I realized it was Sammis I had tied up in the slope chair and linked with a unit chain to the Aerie itself. He probably could have escaped, but had waited.

  I shook my head. The stillness was deafening, and it seemed like I was two different people. Maybe a poor way to explain and it didn't excuse anything. Just easier, I guessed, to destroy and remold world cultures while letting the god-side of me take the blame.

  "Hardly, just doing what's necessary."

  "Eagle crap!" he snorted. "I saw the look on your face when you surprised me. You came in here like the God of Fire. Wryan would call it psychotic dissociation or some such."

  I swigged some firejuice and finished off two battle-ration cubes. One was a full day's nourishment, but diving like I'd been doing was work.

  The change-winds were blowing.

  "Really much easier to manipulate poor unsuspecting sapiences than face the real problem, isn't it, God Loki?"

  Sammis or not, I could have punched him. He was right, at least about it being easier to deal with out-time cultures, and I might as well face it. I'd have to sooner or later.

  "I didn't notice you doing much about it, great original Tribune."

  "You may be right," he sighed. "That's a problem we all have, those of us who are sane, Wyran says. Life is too easy to face the hard decisions, and so we plan and watch and wait and hope, and are the compliant victims of the schemers and the madmen. I'd hoped you were differ­ent, especially after your head-on confrontations with Heimdall."

  I was ready to go and was replacing my power cells, another burnt-out gauntlet, packing up more eternasteel tablets, and finishing off the firejuice in the beaker.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're strong enough to take on the entire Guard in a single battle, I sometimes think, and win, and yet you never raised your voice after you came back from Hell, never said a word."

  "And neither did anyone else," I reminded him. Hell, they had all hung back and wanted me to do their fighting for them.

  I swung on the carrying case.

  "How will you stop Heimdall? He'll undo everything you do."

  I halted, caught in mid-stride, but both riddles were crystal clear, oh so clear, and with them, the response to Sammis's questions.

  Sam
mis insisted I was a god. So did most of the Guard, both those who supported me and those who opposed me. And with that lineup, I had assumed the choice was simple—either you're a god or you're not. I knew I wasn't, not in terms of my own definition of a god. But the defi­nitions weren't the real question, and I'd been hung up on definitions, just like everyone else.

  Without even understanding, Sammis had flamed right to the point. "Who" wasn't the question. Nor "what," but rather "how." Like "how are you going to deal with what you are?" Like "how will you stop Heimdall?"

  That second "how" I could answer. Now. The other would come, had to come, and soon. But first—Heimdall.

  "Actions speak louder than words. Or definitions, Sammis."

  "Wait!"

  His voice was lost as I slid across the skies of Query to the Tower, glittering as it rose from the Square to chal­lenge the noon sun.

  Heimdall could not undo what I had done without his tools, his sources of information. Without them, he could not locate the turning points, nor give temporal turning points to the Guards he would send to undo what I had done and would yet do.

  I ducked under the edge of time and broke-out in As­signments, flaming, lightnings gathered to my chest, but only Giron stood at the main Assignments console, his mouth opening wide at my appearance.

  "Out!" I ordered him, for I did not wish him harm.

  Without fanfare, I unleashed my energies across the consoles to leave fused metal, twisted plastic and acrid smoke as witnesses to my visit

  Assignments was the beginning, only the start, for the information remained in the Data Banks.

  Below the deepest depths of the Tower foundations, levels below the Maintenance Hall, locked in behind walls that would halt a battle cruiser, were the memory banks, the lattice crystals that held the information amassed through millennia.

  I bypassed the walls, breaking-out inside the sterile confines, skip-sliding down the dim rows of lattices, flinging lightnings before me and dropping antimatter cubes be­hind. With a final toss at the core, I ducked fully under­time and slid into the sunlit sky above the Tower.

  Though the muffled sounds of explosions rumbled through the ground and the Tower trembled, the massive, buried, and time-protected walls surrounding the physical data storage area held firm. The Data Banks themselves had not been so lucky, I knew.

  More as a gesture than anything, I gathered more power from the air around me and flung a last thunderbolt at the steps in front of the South Portal and scored the glow-stones with a line of black fire that would live within the glowstones for eons.

  I turned my attention to the past I must create anew. I needed to choose from the possibilities left on my list, for the moments of hard decision would be coming sooner than I had anticipated.

  Heimdall and his cohorts would be grouping already, and the schemer would be plotting any way he could to stop my efforts.

  Mighty gods had deceived themselves, and I was only a man, whatever immortality, whatever weapons of the gods I might bear, whatever delusions it might take to remake a small corner of the galaxy. To myself, I would have to answer, not for what I might be called, or for the names I refused, but for what I had done and would yet do.

  Along the way, I had a score to settle, somewhat in­directly, which might cloud the change-winds more.

  I time-dived from the sunlight and sky above the Tower toward Gurlennis, back until, flicking in and out, back and forth, I could sense another link to Query, a figure break­ing-out into the sky above nomads' tents, where gentle wanderers camped—or at least those ancestors of the green-bronzed philosopher I had met in a para-time instant, an instant that was not and would not ever be, yet would.

  To break into another's past time-line was a feat thought impossible, but determined as I was to do it, I broke and bent the fabric of those instants to my will.

  And the purple of the night was sundered into frag­ments, and each fragment was a song, and the peoples of that time bowed and prostrated themselves then before the song; for not only was there music in the heavens, but fire.

  For the god of fire, he who was called Loki, raised his arm against the other, who was called Zealor.

  And Zealor called upon Loki and begged of him mercy, and asked that his days not be numbered; but Loki the god of fire was not dissuaded, and turned the lightnings of fire and the powers of time against Zealor, and Zealor was no more.

  The wanderers who beheld the fires that exceeded the stars saw, and covered their eyes, and were filled with awe.

  He who was called Loki laughed, and the sound of his laughter brought waves to still lakes, and caused the leaves of the trees to tremble. When he had laughed and lowered his hand, behold, where once there had been a mount was a holy place, and thereupon the god of fire placed his holy writ for this chosen people, lest they forget.

  As I dropped back undertime, shivering, the die was cast. After having killed my own, knowingly and deliber­ately, no matter how noble the reason, the time of denying my own responsibilities, my own failures to take stock, had passed, and passed forever.

  Sertis, good old stable, always mid-tech Sertis, was next, and the revolution of fire would strike the unexpected to fan the no-longer-gentle winds of time-change into the hurricane of time.

  The king-emperors of Sertis had ruled because they controlled the water, and thus, the minds and power of Sertis. Water enough existed, but it was locked into the polar caps and the plateau glaciers.

  I headed for the fiftieth century before my own birth.

  The god of fire appeared and struck his lances upon the ice that had been, that had crowned the far poles, and the ice and snow were no more, but became as boiling water, and broke their boundaries and sundered the moun­tains that confined them.

  Pillars of fire and soot were there, also, of red and of black, and when the ruler of the place called Sertis felt his throne quake, asked that ruler of his generals the cause.

  And they knew not, save that the fires of Hell had ap­peared at the far poles, and that the ice had departed, and the water had come.

  Then, the soldiers of the armies were afraid, and heeded not their commanders, nor the voice of their ruler.

  And when the priests appeared before the assembled peoples, neither were they heard, but were offered by the peoples as sacrifices to the god of fire; and the god listened and left unto them his holy book that his will might be done.

  The winds of time-change screamed as I crossed them on my time-vault back to Query.

  Would I exist when I was done? Had I become as a god with no beginning and no end?

  From the undertime the planet Query would be shaken, twisted, bent like a leaf in a tempest, assaulted by the change winds out of time. For each wind from the pasts I had altered would create its own winds, and the second winds would blow unto the third winds, and no man or god would know his place while blew the wild winds of time.

  In and out of time, solid as I approached, stood my Aerie, as stood the Tower of Immortals.

  "And now?" asked Sammis as I broke-out and began to replenish my stores of destruction.

  "The rest will come, Sammis. The rest will come."

  I noticed he was free of the chain. He had been waiting for me, and he was waiting for me to speak again.

  "By the way," I asked, "how and why did you and Wryan fake her death? Little lapse of tense there, old god. Were you the one who provided all the behind the scenes assistance? And why?"

  In retrospect, all of it seemed so clear. Only Sammis could have maneuvered so cleverly. Sammis gently pro­vided suggestions, and all the Guard listened. Stupid of me not to have seen it. Wryan planned, and Sammis executed, even that first test to determine my capabilities. I saw not just what Sammis was, for he was Sammis Olon, but the others—my parents, and Baldur.

  Why had it taken so long for me to see the obvious? How my parents had stayed on Query long enough to give me what I needed. Or how and why Baldur had left for Terra to create legends and to
shape all the differing Terran cultures with facets of our own, and with his in­sistence on the importance of understanding technology. Or how—the list was long, too long.

  "It wasn't that hard, Loki," answered Sammis, who stood there nearly forgotten, "not with all the distractions you provided. Wryan and I were ready to leave earlier, probably would have, except when you came along we kept hoping—"

  Sammis wasn't that pure, and I cut him off. "How many did you test? Over how many years? How many were too scared to dive again? Old god, don't dwell too much on idealism! What kind of will does it take to follow the same course for centuries upon centuries? What kind of power is that?"

  All the time I was talking, I was replenishing and watch­ing the man I had finally accepted as Sammis Olon.

  Time, subjectively and objectively, was short, and I girded myself for another dive, another series.

  "Goodbye, old god. Where's Wryan?"

  "Where she's always been, grand-great-grandson and young god. She and I wish you the best. If you can accept yourself, no more, no less, you'll make it."

  That stopped me. Great-great-grandson?

  "Great-great-grandson?"

  "You know, Loki, you kept suppressing the things you didn't want to know. That's the brute strength of youth, but the same thing that will keep you from greatness—if you let it."

  He smiled, then went on. "Your mother is Wryan's and my great-granddaughter, and if you were told it once, you were told it a hundred times."

  As he said it, the memories were there—"great-grand­daughter of Sammis Olon," the stories of the Guard—and other remembrances: looking up at someone crying, seeing a look that might have been fear on a face looming above me.

  As I remembered, felt the memories toppling into place, I could hear the change-winds howling down toward the Now like night eagles swooping in for the kill.

  "Your saving grace," continued Sammis implacably, "has been your willingness to undergo punishment for your mistakes. Accept yourself and keep that willingness, and it may be enough to protect us all—all of us, mortals, Immortals, and you."

  Sammis delivered the words quietly, as if he were stating well-known facts or established truths.