Ghosts of Time

by Steve White

  But she obviously grasped, and was shaken by, the implications of what he was saying. She glanced left and right to make sure no one was overhearing them. “Let’s get to the inn where I’m staying, so we can talk in private. There are two of my men there—everyone else is giving it a wide berth, so there’ll be room for you. It’s not a nice place,” she added in an apologetic aside to Chantal. “In fact, it’s pretty squalid. But you’ll be safe there.”

  Chantal’s features took on an expression of what Jason interpreted (correctly) as exasperation with being treated as though she was made of spun sugar. He considered telling her that by Zenobia’s standards she was made of spun sugar, but thought better of it.

  As Zenobia led them through the streets, Jason drew abreast of her, matching her long-legged stride with some difficulty. “You never told me what brings you to Port Royal at this particular time.”

  “Well, let’s just say you and I may be in a position to help each other again. And for the best of all possible reasons: a common enemy.”

  “What? Are you saying Transhumanist time travelers are here?” Hunting me, maybe, ran his unspoken thought. If sometime in the future of 1865 they defeat the Order of the Three-Legged Horse and obtain Gracchus’ letter …

  “Not that I know of. And if they are, you should be able to detect them if they come close. But I have reason to believe there is a Teloi in Port Royal.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The inn lived down to expectations, but Zenobia had spoken the truth about its relative privacy. The two Maroons she had left there—one very large African with scars from the slave-lash on his back and no discernible sense of humor, and one astonishingly tattooed Taino—were enough to discourage intrusion by anyone not already frightened off by Zenobia’s reputation for witchery. She had paid the innkeeper enough to soothe his pain over the loss of other patronage, but made clear to him that her conversation with her friends was confidential. He kept his distance as she and the three time travelers sat down on benches at a rough wooden table, after bringing the rum she had ordered. It was a particularly ferocious brand of the well-named “kill-devil” which flowed through Port Royal as though from a municipal utility system. Chantal, after nearly choking on one imprudently quick gulp, nursed it along just to be sociable, shuddering at each sip.

  “So,” said Zenobia as the Maroons kept watch at the door, “tell me about this letter.”

  Jason related the entire story of Gracchus and the Order of the Three-Legged Horse. He was well aware that such revelation of the future violated one of the Authority’s most fundamental rules. But he consoled himself with the thought that this was a special case, and that Zenobia, although self-exiled in the seventeenth century, was hardly the usual denizen of the past to whom the rule was intended to apply. And besides, he concluded the thought, what Rutherford doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Zenobia was gratified to learn that the work she had begun in the 1660s would endure for at least two centuries, but she was unable to shed any light on the letter, or on why its mysterious author had been so insistent that Jason needed to meet her on this date.

  “Maybe it has something to do with this Teloi you mentioned,” Jason prompted. “Tell us about him.”

  A shadow seemed to cross her features. “Do you remember the Teloi the Tuova’Zhonglu sent to Earth ahead of their battlestation, as advance liaison officer to deal with the Transhumanists?”

  “Only too well—the one who went by the name ‘Ahriman.’” Jason’s eyes met Mondrago’s in a moment of shared memory of a night in the mountains overlooking the Bahia de Neiba in Hispaniola, twenty-three and half years earlier to Zenobia but horribly fresh in their own minds.

  It had been then that they had learned of the divisions among the Teloi, a race that had ages ago bioengineered itself into a near-immortality whose unanticipated side effects had left them, by human lights, insane. Those who had created homo sapiens a hundred thousand years earlier had belonged to the Oratioi’Zhonglu, a group or association (as close as English could come to the untranslatable Zhonglu) who had exiled themselves on a world where they could reign forever among a race of slaves and worshipers, with no external reality to contradict their pantomime of godhood. But their human creations had turned rebellious, and those of lower Mesopotamia had learned the rudiments of civilization from a stranded spaceship crew of the amphibian Nagommo, inveterate enemies of the Teloi. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the galaxy, the long Nagommo-Teloi interstellar war had ended in a Pyrrhic victory for the former. The Nagommo had won at the expense of their own delayed-action extinction. But the Teloi had been exterminated outright … with the exception of the Tuova’Zhonglu, a military cadre whose characteristic Teloi madness had taken the form of an obsessive conviction that they had been cheated of victory, betrayed by effete, decadent dilettantes of whom the Oratioi’Zhonglu were prime specimens. For millennia they had haunted the spaceways in their grim battlestations, nursing their festering grievances and burnishing their self-image as the chosen survivors of an otherwise unworthy race, destined to restore Teloi glory in due course. God alone knew how much horror they had wreaked on helpless worlds in their wanderings.

  Then, in 1669, a battlestation had passed through the Solar System. And the Transhumanists had known it would, having been in contact with the last pathetic remnants of the Oratioi’Zhonglu “Olympian gods” in fifth century B.C. Greece. (The Oratioi’Zhonglu had reciprocated the contempt of the Tuova’Zhonglu, whom they regarded as gold-braided boors, but the two factions had been in fitful communication.) And they had made contact …

  “Right,” Mondrago nodded. “The Transhumanist leader—Romain, Category Three, Eighty-Ninth Degree, wasn’t it?—suckered them into a deal with bogus promises of what he could do for them with time travel. In exchange, they were going to give the Transhumanists Teloi military technology. In the meantime Ahriman helped with the creation of their twisted cult by posing as a new and especially powerful version of the Petro, the evil family of loa, or gods, who according to African beliefs could be inveigled into giving you your wishes with ritual sacrifice—” He stopped, halted by the memories that the word sacrifice had summoned up from the dark recesses of his memory.

  “—And promises to serve them,” Jason finished for him. “But we queered their little deal when we destroyed the battlestation. And we killed Ahriman, which I should think must have put a crimp in their cult.”

  “Remember, Romain mentioned a ‘small advance party’ of them. Ahriman was just the head of a party of three. After you sent Romain to his death and the rest of the Transhumanists were temporally retrieved, the two surviving lower-echelon Teloi were stranded on Earth and left to their own devices.”

  “Let me guess,” Jason ventured. “Those ‘devices’ consisted of going into the god business.”

  “Nice work if you can get it,” Mondrago commented.

  “They had a ready-made cult to sponge on,” Jason reminded him.

  “That must have been difficult, with no Transhumanist go-betweens,” said Chantal. “As I understand, the Tuova’Zhonglu Teloi were too arrogant to learn a human language. How did they communicate?”

  “You’d be amazed how mutual self-interest can overcome a language barrier,” Zenobia sniffed. “The Transhumanists had chosen houngans and mambos, or male and female priests, from among their acolytes and left them in charge. They were the ones among the escaped slaves who found the cult most to their taste.” She grimaced at the ghastly play on words she had unintentionally committed. “Anyway, they and the Teloi were so obviously useful to each other that it didn’t even need to be put into words. The priests had a couple of real live Petro loa to put on display, thus strengthening their hold on the worshipers. Which in turn made the Teloi indispensable and assured them of survival. Having to live under primitive conditions among a race they despised soon drove them mad—”

  (“How did anyone notice the change?” muttered Mondrago.)

  “—but at least they were we
ll fed.” Zenobia spoke the last two words unflinchingly. “You remember that we saw Ahriman getting the lion’s share of—”

  “Yes, I remember,” Jason cut in hastily, not wanting her to continue.

  “Well, his two subordinates eventually acquired a taste that went beyond the requirements of ritual. As time went on, the cultists began raiding the plantations of Saint Domingue … harvesting among the slaves.”

  Chantal took a gulp of kill-devil, looking as though she needed it.

  “But you’ve fought them,” Jason stated rather than asked.

  “Oh, yes. We’ve kept Jamaica free of them—the language difference helped—and we’ve even had some successes over in Hispaniola. A few years ago we caught and killed one of the Teloi.” Zenobia smiled at a pleasurable memory. “Since then, the other one has gone even madder, and the cult’s atrocities have caused it to be widely hated among the slaves in Saint Domingue, which has given me an opening for spreading my message there.”

  Mondrago grinned nastily. “I’ll bet the Transhumanists will shit rivets the next time they drop in and find that their carefully nurtured cult has been discredited thanks to a pair of crazed Teloi loose cannons.”

  “Unfortunately, the cult is as feared as it is hated. It’s very hard to make any headway against it among the ignorant and superstitious—which of course means all the slaves. Also, a houngan called Donnez has arisen who seems to be more ambitious and intelligent than the rest. He’s persuaded the one remaining Teloi to teach him enough of the Teloi language to communicate after a fashion. By now, he’s become a master at manipulating the hopelessly insane Teloi, who goes by the name of Ogoun Ge-rouge, a Petro death-god. You see,” Zenobia explained parenthetically, “the ‘Ge-rouge’ means he’s the Petro version. They tend to have the same names as the Rada, or good loa.”

  “I’m confused,” said Mondrago forthrightly.

  “You’re not the only one to react that way,” Zenobia assured him.

  “But the point is,” said Chantal, attempting to drag the discussion back to practicalities, “according to you, that Teloi is now in Port Royal.” She shook her head. “Wouldn’t he be a little bit conspicuous here?”

  “My sources of information indicate that Donnez has managed to find a ship whose captain was willing, if paid well enough, to bring in himself and a few adepts … and a certain large crate. The problem, of course, would be getting the crate ashore and finding a place of concealment. They probably haven’t done so yet, in this damned weather. We’ve been watching the docks.”

  “But why are they going to the trouble?” wondered Jason.

  “They must be making a serious attempt to get their cult established in Jamaica. Also,” Zenobia added calmly, “they’re probably hunting for me. Ogoun Ge-rouge would have insisted on being in on that, for revenge. He and the other Teloi had become homosexual lovers, you see. I gather that sort of thing works more or less the same way among the Teloi as among us.” She dismissed the subject with a toss of her head. “Anyway, Jason, this is just what your Special Operations Section exists to combat. Will you help us?”

  “Yes, of course.” Jason met her eyes and saw nothing else besides those eyes, not even the sharp looks he was getting from Mondrago and Chantal. “We’ll do whatever we can, for as long as we can stay.”

  Which, he reminded himself, isn’t going to be long. After which, the Observer Effect says she’s going to die.

  How much can I justify telling her?

  It was the following afternoon, and Jason and Zenobia stood in the cemetery on the Palisadoes, gazing at Henry Morgan’s tomb. The air was as motionless as it had been the day before, and the water in the distance as smooth, and it was all very peaceful. It seemed impossible that the quiet tomb could contain the spirit of the overgrown roaring boy Jason had known.

  “I was here four years ago when he died,” said Zenobia. “He had been going to a folk doctor among his slaves, and also to the local obeah man or spirit doctor. He told me he liked them better than his Western doctors because they didn’t try to make him stop drinking. But neither sort could do him any good by that time.” She gave a sigh of reminiscence. “For his funeral, the governor issued a twenty-four hour amnesty. A lot of ships flying no flag showed up, and there were so many men with prices on their heads walking around the streets that it was almost like old times. When they interred him, the Royal Navy ships in port fired a twenty-two gun salute.”

  “I thought twenty-one was the regulation number for a former governor.”

  “So it is. But this was Morgan.”

  “Yes. He was always an exception to a lot of rules, wasn’t he?” For a long moment, nothing else needed to be said. “It must have been quite a funeral,” Jason finally continued. “But … I imagine you and your Maroons held your own ceremony.”

  Zenobia gave him a look of new appreciation. “Henri must have told you a few things,” she said, referring to Dr. Henri Boyer, the expert in Caribbean folkways who had fought beside her and given his life to save hers.

  “He did. He told me about the duppy: the spirit that gives the body power when it is alive, and which can cause much harm to the living if it’s allowed to get loose after the body dies, without the restraint of the heart and brain—at least if the duppy is a powerful one.” Jason gave her a quizzical look. “You don’t literally believe in any of this, do you?”

  “After so many years among the Maroons … I’m not so sure. At any rate, my men certainly do. And if ever there was a duppy that could wreak havoc, it was Morgan’s!” She smiled at memories of Morgan … and, Jason strongly suspected, of Henri Boyer. “We couldn’t do a proper Koo-min-ah ceremony because we didn’t have access to the body. But at least we had all nine nights to try our best. With any luck, his duppy will stay in the grave where it belongs.”

  But the body won’t, according to Roderick Grenfell. His coffin will be last seen floating out to sea, when this ground dissolves. Jason looked down at the sand, and recalled what was going to happen to it in two days. So many things kept reminding him of that.

  “It must have seemed strange, talking to him at the end. After all, you remembered going into space with him, when we destroyed the Teloi battlestation.” A thought occurred to Jason. “You didn’t—?”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t tell him anything about the parts of his memory you had told me you were going to come back and wipe. Not that it would have done any harm at that point; he would have thought I was talking nonsense. But it was tempting. He would have thought it was a damned good story.”

  “But you still didn’t.”

  “Of course I didn’t.” Her voice dropped. “I had promised you I wouldn’t, hadn’t I?”

  They walked back into the waterfront district. The heat was as stifling as ever, but Jason overheard people commenting that at least there had been none of Port Royal’s chronic minor earth tremors lately. He knew what that really meant: the Earth was gathering its forces.

  He realized he probably wasn’t very good company. He started to say something apologetic about it, but the thought made him realize that Zenobia seemed equally lost in her own thoughts. They walked on in silence to the inn. The interior was deserted, for the others were out taking their turn watching the docks.

  Abruptly, Zenobia spoke. “I’ve never forgotten you, you know. But it’s been a long time. Why didn’t you come back at an earlier date?”

  “I’ve told you why I had to come here yesterday,” he reminded her. And nothing happened yesterday. So why did the letter specify June 4? “But I probably should have.”

  “And of course, you never will come back, at some later point in your own lifetime, to a date earlier than this. Because if so, I’d already remember it, wouldn’t I?” She shook her head at the perplexities of time travel, then turned and met his eyes. “I wish you had.”

  A moment passed before Jason trusted himself to speak. “I thought it was Henri that you—”

  “Oh, I’ll never forget him. But he�
��s been dead for almost twenty-four years of my lifetime. And after he died … when we were stranded and took that trek along the southern shore of Hispaniola, and I got to know you …” Her eyes shifted away, and her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “I never told you.” Then her eyes took his again, and would not let go.

  “I never told you either,” he heard himself say.

  This is insane, he frantically told himself. I’m not some adolescent boy letting his balls do his thinking for him. And this is wrong on every conceivable level. It would be wrong even if I didn’t know she’s going to die shortly and can’t tell her I know. And—

  And then she was in his arms and none of that mattered any more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Sir, I need to have a word with you in private.”

  That got Jason’s attention. For Mondrago to say “Sir” in that formal tone of voice was unusual, and generally ominous. His facial expression went with it.

  “All right, Alexandre.” Jason took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his hair, for he had just come into the common room of the inn from the afternoon heat where Zenobia was still observing the docks. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  They left the area of the door, where the Taino Maroon was keeping watch in his usual inscrutable silence. Walking toward the rickety stairs, they passed a table where Chantal sat in stony, tight-lipped silence. She had done that a lot lately. Jason wondered why.

  Once they were in the upper room—more like a loft, really—Jason sat down, for his head barely had clearance. He waited for Mondrago to speak up, but the Corsican suddenly seemed overtaken by awkwardness.