Pirates of the Timestream

by Steve White

  So I was right about the solution, he thought, eerily calm, for it was all so clear now. Barely conscious of what he was doing, he mentally activated the recorder function of his brain implant.

  Mondrago’s voice ended the moment. “Uh . . . sir? Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yes. Right.” Jason shook himself and helped the Corsican haul the moaning Romain to his feet. As they turned to march the Transhumanist back into the cabin, Jason looked back one more time. The waves had swept the yardarm away, and the dark head beside Morgan’s was now turned toward Soledad, which was coming about to effect a rescue. As they left the cargo hold, an obscure instinct caused Jason to slap a switch and turn off the hold’s interior lighting.

  In the cabin, they used belt-ropes to lash Romain to one of the passenger seats, and a strip torn from Mondrago’s shirt to gag him. His eyes were molten with pain and hate as he glared at them.

  “All right,” said Jason. “Let’s get off this ship.”

  “What?” Mondrago looked mutinous. “Sir, do you mean to say we’re just going to leave him alive? After . . . Pauline?” He couldn’t bring himself to elaborate.

  “That’s right. In fact, we’re going to send him on his way . . . under autopilot, on the course you set in at his order.” Jason held Mondrago’s eyes for a moment. The Corsican’s expression softened as understanding awoke.

  “Oh—I see. Of course.” Mondrago bestowed a charming smile on Romain, then went to the pilot station to set the autopilot.

  Jason leaned over Romain with a smile of his own. “We’re sending you straight to where you wanted to go: the Massif de la Selle in Hispaniola—where, in 1791, an expedition of ours is going to find a century-and-a-quarter-old wreck of a small spacecraft on a mountainside.”

  The pain and the hate fled from Romain’s eyes, replaced by something else. He frantically tried to talk through his gag, producing only choking sounds.

  “Okay,” said Mondrago. “We have a minute to get off this ship.”

  They returned to the cargo hold, ignoring Romain’s strangled noises, and jumped out into the water. Overhead, the cargo hatch closed and the arrowhead-shaped area of barely visible distortion swung around and headed north by northwest. In the middle distance, Jason saw Morgan and his companion being hauled aboard Soledad.

  They didn’t have to tread water long before Rolling-Calf picked them up.

  * * *

  Zenobia looked dissatisfied after Jason finished relating the story of their final disposition of Romain. “It was too easy for him.”

  “Life is unfair,” Jason philosophized.

  “So our rulers are always telling us, as though that platitude somehow excuses all their tyrannies and stupidities.” Zenobia dismissed the subject with a toss of her head. “Well, we’re about to separate from the fleet.”

  “You’re not going back to Port Royal with Morgan?” asked Mondrago.

  “No. We’ve already got our share of the loot aboard this ship. And Port Royal isn’t the most comfortable place for my men; too many slave-catchers nosing around. We’re going straight back to Morant Bay at the eastern end of Jamaica, not far from the Maroon settlements in the Blue Mountains. But first, I suppose you two will want to be put aboard Soledad.”

  Jason shook his head. “No. If we may, we’d like to come with you.”

  Zenobia and Mondrago both stared.

  “But,” Zenobia said, gesturing over the taffrail at the flagship across the water, “two of your men are still over there. Don’t you want to—?”

  “No,” Jason repeated with a more emphatic headshake. “It is vitally important that I not set foot aboard Soledad, and that I not encounter Henry Morgan again.”

  “Why?” they both demanded in unison.

  Jason told them. A long, stunned silence followed.

  “Of course you can come with us,” Zenobia finally said.

  * * *

  By the time Rolling-Calf reached Jamaica, Jason and his party had only four days to go before retrieval. After the ketch’s cramped quarters, the trek up into the Blue Mountains was positively refreshing.

  While still at sea, Jason had been able to draw Zenobia out concerning the Transhumanist underground. She had been a mine of information, but—as he had more than half expected—she was unable to tell him the two things he most wanted to know. She had never been told when The Day was due to come; she was too low-ranking for that. And she couldn’t venture to predict where the Transhumanists’ compact temporal displacer would be located at any given time, for it was periodically disassembled and moved.

  The voyage had also given Zenobia the opportunity to quiet the last terrors of her men, who had seen her floating up into the sky and disappearing into the storm. “I’ve explained that it was the work of the demons, and that I was able to escape by magic,” she told Jason and Mondrago on May 20, as the digital countdown projected onto Jason’s optic nerve ticked down, “They were able to accept it. Their belief system holds stranger things than that.”

  “Speaking of ‘demons,’” said Jason, “Romain mentioned an ‘advance party’ of the Tuova’Zhonglu Teloi. Ahriman was the only one we ever saw. But it’s possible that there are others still alive, on Hispaniola.”

  “If so, they’re now stranded there permanently,” said Mondrago with deep satisfaction.

  “Still, they could cause some trouble, especially given their long lifespans.”

  “Which,” said Zenobia, “is why it’s important that I continue doing what I’ve been doing: creating a ‘counter-cult’ that will clearly identify them as demons—and humans who worship them as evil. Furthermore, I’m going to devote the rest of my life here to cutting those ‘long lifespans’ as short as possible! Their cult can’t be eradicated at once, but with no supply of fresh Teloi it’s bound to wither and die out over time if we can eliminate any that are already here. And as long as I’m alive, they’ll have me for an enemy.”

  “I don’t think I envy them,” Mondrago remarked drily.

  “Zenobia,” said Jason, “we don’t have much time. Let me ask you one thing. Henri Boyer told me how you feel about the Authority—no, about the entire society the Authority represents. But would you accept help from us if—and I can make no promises—we could sometimes send expeditions back here to your probable lifetime?”

  “I think I might,” she said with unwonted quietness. “You can’t expect me to feel exactly the same way you do; there’s too much history in the way. But I think I’ve changed my mind about a few things. To some extent you have Henri to thank for that.” For an instant, she couldn’t continue. But then she raised her head and met his eyes unflinchingly. “And besides, I’ve come to understand why your ancestors did what they did to mine—why they had to. Humanity must be kept human.”

  “That’s our job in Special Ops.”

  “Keep on doing it—any way you have to.” She extended a hand. Jason took it in a firm clasp.

  Then the countdown reached zero, and neither of their hands was holding anything anymore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  After blinking the bright electric lighting of the displacer dome out of his eyes and overcoming the momentary dizziness of transition, the first thing Jason did was to look around and confirm that Nesbit and Grenfell were both on the stage with himself and Mondrago, and both alive.

  The second thing he noticed was Kyle Rutherford, in his usual position to await a scheduled retrieval. The old man looked as though he had been struck in the chest as he stared at the stage with its four—not six—figures.

  Rutherford hastened forward. “Where—?”

  Jason pulled no punches. “Dr. Boyer and Inspector Da Cunha are dead, with no remains.” He glanced around the floor of the displacer stage. A spot of wetness caught his eye—a puddle in which lay a tiny sphere with slimy strands of undersea life adhering to it. (Mondrago, in a moment of mordant humor, had wondered aloud if there would be a shark flopping about the stage with Boyer’s TRD in its belly.) Els
ewhere, he knew, would be another TRD, covered with ash and dirt. “You don’t want to know how Pauline died.”

  “This is terrible!” gasped Rutherford. “What happened?”

  “It’s a long story, which I need to relate to you in private.”

  “Yes, at once. Come to my office.”

  “Right. But first . . .” Jason turned to Nesbit and Grenfell and shook hands vigorously with both of them. “I’m very glad—very, very glad—to see that you two made it. I hope it wasn’t too difficult, there at the end.”

  They returned his handclasp, but their expressions said they felt there was something slightly odd about the intensity of his relief. “We had no great problems, Commander,” said Nesbit. “We simply followed your instructions.”

  “My ‘instructions’?” echoed Jason, puzzled.

  “Why, yes, Commander. The instructions you gave us aboard Soledad before your departure. Everything went as you predicted. Oh, by the way . . . where did you go after that?”

  Jason and Mondrago exchanged a blank look. Then Jason understood, and slowly smiled. It all fit.

  * * *

  Jason found himself wishing for some kill-devil by the time he had finished talking. In his preliminary oral report to Rutherford, he had left out only one thing—the most important thing.

  So now Rutherford knew about the Tuova’Zhonglu Teloi, and the repulsive cult they and the Transhumanists had founded in seventeenth-century Hispaniola, and about Zenobia and her efforts to counter it. He also knew the origin of the spacecraft wreck Sam Asamoa had found. Finally, he knew about the destruction of the Teloi battlestation. Jason had dared hope to receive a pat on the head for that last. But it, and everything else, paled into insignificance beside the one other thing Rutherford now knew.

  “So,” Rutherford said in a hollow voice, “Henry Morgan returned to his fleet after learning about time travel, and going into space, and seeing modern technology in operation, and . . . and . . .” He couldn’t continue, and his eyes went to the sword in his display case as he so often did at moments like this.

  “At least,” Jason reminded him, “Morgan did return to his fleet as history required.”

  “Yes. That’s something.” A shudder ran through Rutherford as he contemplated the alternative. “Nevertheless, he did so with knowledge that neither he nor anyone else of his century was supposed to possess. There’s nothing in recorded history to suggest that anyone did possess it. But surely he talked about his adventures! The story would spread!” His face wore the look of a man peering over a precipice at whose bottom lurked the unthinkable.

  “As you’ve observed,” Jason said quietly, “history holds nothing to indicate that it happened. Which means it didn’t happen—it must have been prevented. And . . . I believe I know how it was prevented. You see, there’s one thing I haven’t told you.”

  “Yes?”

  “I haven’t told you because I knew you wouldn’t believe me without evidence.”

  “I realize we’ve had our differences, Jason, but I know you to be a man of your word.”

  “Nevertheless, you would have found this unacceptable. It was hard enough for me to accept. But there’s no other answer. And something Nesbit said to me down there on the displacer stage confirmed it.”

  Rutherford’s eyes narrowed. “You spoke of ‘evidence.’”

  “Right. Let’s go and view the disc from my implant.”

  * * *

  “There,” said the technician as she put back in place the tiny flap of artificial skin that covered the slot in Jason’s right temple. In her other hand was the retracting tool which now held an almost invisibly tiny computer disc.

  The neurally interfaced brain implant was such a flagrant violation of the Human Integrity Act that the Authority had had to expend a fair amount of political capital to obtain a special exemption for it. They had gone to the trouble anyway because it had a large number of very useful functions. One of the most important—and the one which required the highest percentage of the implant’s almost negligible volume—was that of recording what Jason saw and heard, by means of a direct splicing onto his optic and auditory nerves. It didn’t do so continuously, because the disc’s capacity, while considerable (two hours of footage per gigabyte), was not infinite. Instead, it was turned on and off by direct neural command, enabling Jason to ration his available time, recording only the significant sights and sounds.

  “I am, of course, consumed with curiosity to see this Teloi battlestation,” said Rutherford as the technician inserted the disc into the highly specialized projector it required.

  “You will,” Jason assured him. “As always, you’ll view the whole thing in the course of my formal debriefing. But right now there’s just one thing I want to show you.” He addressed the technician. “Fast-forward to almost the end. And we don’t need audio.”

  It took only a few moments to zero in on the view from the Kestrel’s cargo hold, with Mondrago and Romain at the edge of vision and the Caribbean visible a short distance below through the yawning cargo hatch. A yardarm floated on those unsettled waters, with two men clutching it. The one to the right was looking up, so that they were looking directly into his face.

  “Freeze,” Jason told the technician. “That’s Henry Morgan on the left,” he said to Rutherford. “But let’s zoom in on that face to the right.” The technician complied, and the face filled the screen.

  At first, Rutherford looked blank. “What were you doing—?” he began . . . and then he remembered whose implant had recorded this image, and his breath caught.

  Jason nodded. “Yes, that’s right. I’m the first person in the history of time travel to catch a glimpse of myself.”

  Rutherford said nothing, for he had lost the power of speech. Even after he regained it, he was unable to form sentences, only managing false starts. “But . . . It can’t . . . Impossible . . . How . . . ?”

  “Now we know how the seeming paradox involving Morgan is going to be prevented. I’m going to go back and prevent it.”

  * * *

  By a stroke of ill luck, Alistair Kung currently held the revolving chairmanship of the council’s special ops oversight committee. Now the committee met in special session, with Jason, Rutherford and Irving Nesbit in attendance—the last at Kung’s insistence. Kung spoke in a voice as heavy as the rest of him.

  “So do I understand, Commander Thanou, that you want us to send back a party—”

  “No, not a party. Just me. It’s a matter of shaving with Occam’s Razor. I’m the only one we know was involved.” The committee members’ expressions said they did indeed know it, having viewed the recording, and that knowing wasn’t the same thing as being happy about it.

  “I am gratified that you are adopting such an uncharacteristically conservative philosophy,” said Kung ponderously.

  “But,” Helene de Tredville pointed out with prim severity, “the fact remains that we would be sending you to a period of time when you yourself were already present at an earlier point in the timeline of your personal consciousness. As you know, this flies in the face of one of the Authority’s most fundamental guidelines. There must never be a possibility of a time traveler encountering himself.”

  “But,” Jason reminded her, “I didn’t ‘encounter’ myself. I merely saw myself. No harm done.”

  “But even that is unprecedented!” sputtered Alcide Martiletto, who looked as if he was experiencing heart palpitations at the thought. Everyone ignored him, as usual. Jason wondered how he had gotten onto the committee. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “Also,” Jadoukh Kubischev said, hoisting his large frame up straighter in his chair, “there is the matter of the piece of equipment you want to take with you.”

  “That I must take with me if I’m to do what’s needful,” Jason corrected him. “And prior to this meeting I’ve had a chance to consult with the experts. They assure me that the item I require can be miniaturized to the point of meeting the ‘all-yo
u-can-conveniently-carry’ rule, at least if it’s designed for a preset, one-shot application as this one would be. And it should be light enough for me to tread water with it. Disguising it as an in-period artifact would be difficult—but there’s no need to do so.”

  “No need?” Rutherford sounded like a surgeon who had just heard someone say there was no need to sterilize the instruments.

  “No, because after using it I’ll simply let go of it and it will sink to the bottom of the Caribbean. Here’s my plan. I’ll go back to the precise moment after Morgan jumped into the sea. That moment will be easily ascertainable, since my implant automatically keeps time on the recorder imagery. The exact location will be a little trickier, but it can be inferred from the recorded data. I’ll appear just over the water, fall in, join Morgan on the yardarm he was holding onto, and do what has to be done.” Jason glanced at Nesbit. “There’s something else I have to do, once Morgan and I are hauled aboard his flagship. After I’ve done that, I’ll activate my TRD—one of the Special Ops ‘controllable’ versions, of course. It shouldn’t be necessary to keep the stage clear for more than a few hours at most.”

  De Tredville looked alarmed. “You mean to say you’re going to vanish from sight aboard a crowded sailing ship?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t do it in anyone’s view. Thanks to conversations I’ve had recently with Mr. Nesbit and Dr. Grenfell, I know how I’m going to do it unobserved.”

  “So,” Kubischev said slowly, “they’ve told you what you’re going to do, because they’ve already experienced it . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  “This is all frightfully upsetting!” Martiletto fluted.

  “An understatement,” rumbled Kung. He puffed himself up, toadlike. “Commander Thanou, this is a perfect example of the kind of problems that I have predicted all along your Special Operations Section would cause with its departures from our traditional, tried-and-true guidelines. This entire fiasco of giving Henry Morgan a glimpse of the future—”