Time Streams

by J. Robert King

  The silver man extended his own massive hand and lightly shook the boy’s whole arm. “I am Master Malzra’s Probe.” No sooner had he taken the boy’s hand than the probe noticed a strange, stinging jolt in his silver hide. “Your handshake is shocking.”

  The lad pulled his hand away and shrugged, seeming somehow disappointed. “Just a spell I’ve been working on. Knocks people on their butts. Not golems, I guess. Say, what kind of a name is Master Malzra’s Probe, anyway?”

  “It is the only name I have,” replied the probe truthfully.

  Teferi’s face rumpled, and he shook his head. “Not good enough. You’ve got a personality now. You need a real name.”

  Other young students were gathering in the corridor behind Teferi, and they leaned inward, anticipating something.

  “I am unfamiliar with naming procedures.”

  Teferi gave a confident smile. “Oh, I’m quite familiar. Let’s see. You’re big and shiny. What else is big and shiny? The Null Moon. Why don’t we call you the Null Man?”

  The students laughed at this suggestion.

  The probe felt a sense of irritation. “That sounds unsatisfactory. Null means nothing. Your suggestion would imply I am a nothing man.”

  Teferi nodded seriously, though a smirk played about his mouth. “We can’t have that. Anyway, you aren’t really a man. You’re an artifact. Arty would be a nice name for you. Arty the Artifact.”

  The probe could not determine any reason to reject this suggestion—aside from the chuckles of the students. “Arty is a name used among humans?”

  “Oh, yes,” replied Teferi enthusiastically, “as a first name, but most humans also have a last name. Let’s see, you are silver. What else is made of silver? Spoons are, and since you are large, we ought to name you after the largest spoon—a ladle, or perhaps a shovel. Thus, your full name should be Arty Ladlepate or Arty Shovelhead.”

  These young folk seemed to giggle at any and every suggestion made to them. The silver man became less concerned about their amusement. “Whichever name sounds more pleasant to human ears—”

  “Oh, either name will bring a smile to anyone who hears it. Still, Ladlepate sounds a little too uppity, as if you were putting on airs. Shovelhead is much more accessible. I vote for Arty Shovelhead. What say the rest of you?”

  The gathered students cheered excitedly, and the silver man could not help being swept up in the mood. At the moment, any name seemed better than no name.

  “I shall then be Arty Shovelhead,” the probe said solemnly.

  “Come along, then, Shovelhead,” said Teferi grandly, gesturing down the corridor with his boyish arm. Streamers of conjured illumination fanned out from his fingers. “I have much to show you.”

  The crowd of students surged up around the probe and dragged at his cold metal hands with their warm fingers. He plodded along among them, careful not to step on their feet.

  The entourage of children led the probe along as though he were a visiting dignitary. They arrived first at a large dining hall with ivory rafters and soaring walls of alabaster. Beneath this white vault were long, dark tables crowded with more students who bent above bowls of gruel and platters of hard crackers and cheese.

  “This is the great hall,” narrated Teferi. “This is where we students eat. The food is specially prepared so that nothing about it could distract us from our studies. Notice the bland colors and mean consistency of it all? The flavors are even more indistinguishable. No one could gnaw on one of those crackers and spend even a moment to contemplate its nonexistent virtues.”

  The probe could tell that this boy had an acute grasp of the truth behind appearances. “Master Malzra must care greatly about your studies.”

  Teferi laughed, though the sound was rueful. “Oh, yes. He nurtures our minds like a farmer nurtures grain. He heaps manure on our heads, knowing we will rise up through it, despite it, to bear richly, and then he comes along—with a scythe and cuts our heads off to nourish his own appetites. It is a fine arrangement, depending on who you are.” He had said this last bit while leading the probe and his companions down the passageway to another chamber, similar to the first, except that the vault overhead was dark, and the students at the long tables were crouched over sheets of paper, quill pens scraping fitfully across them. “Here is part of that diet of manure I spoke of. These students are copying plans and treatises of Master Malzra, Mage Barrin, and other scholars. It is in sedulously copying the scribbles of our betters that we become consummate scribblers ourselves.”

  The probe was appreciative. “What do these plans and treatises describe?”

  “Machines, such as yourself. Gadgets, mainly. He’s got a whole mausoleum—um, that is, museum—filled with artifact creatures. You’ll be there too, soon enough. Master Malzra has a very active imagination and puts it to great use devising elaborate means to save himself a little bit of labor. He has created numerous devices to more quickly and efficiently cook the gruel and crackers, to more effectively limit the freedom of those under his command, to more completely defend all of us against external foes so that he alone can torment us.”

  The silver man felt uncomfortable with this new line of thought. “External foes? What foes does Malzra have?”

  “Oh, everyone is against him, or didn’t you know?” said Teferi lightly as they moved farther down the hallway. He idly conjured a small knife, whirled it deftly between his fingers, and then dispelled it. “At least that’s what Malzra thinks. He’s got clockwork creatures and actual warriors roaming the walls around the academy at all hours, and clay men tramping through the woods by the sea, and gear-work birds that spy on the island. I myself have never heard of a single real enemy, but Malzra spends so much time creating these machines and recreating them and perfecting them, there must be something more than psychotic paranoia at the root of it, wouldn’t you think?”

  “I suppose so,” the silver man answered.

  They came to another room, this one filled with dissected hulks of metal, leaning clockwork warriors, dismantled machines, piles of rusted scrap iron, and at the far wall, a great open furnace. Workers on one side of the blazing forge shoveled coal into the flames and pumped massive bellows. Workers on the other side dumped bins of spare parts into great vats of molten metal. Throughout the rest of the grimy chamber, students moved among the ruined machines like vultures picking at a battlefield of dead. A shiver of dread moved through the probe.

  Teferi noticed the impulse and smiled grimly. “See, Arty, even if Malzra has no other enemies, his old creations could easily turn on him. They should. They certainly have reason to hate him. Malzra quickly tires of his playthings. I can imagine a legion of metal men such as yourself learning that Malzra planned to melt them down. They could escape across the sea. I can imagine whole nations of clockwork creatures who have fled their creator only to muster themselves in hopes of returning and killing him.”

  The silver man was aghast. “How could an artifact creature ever seek to destroy the artifact creator?”

  “Give it a year, Arty,” Teferi said lightly, though none of the students laughed this time. The boy patted the golem’s arm. “Give it a year—two at the outside, and you’ll be facing that fiery furnace. It’s the way of artifice. When you’re in pieces in that room, then ask yourself what you think about Master Malzra.”

  * * *

  Jhoira was again in her rocky haven from the world. She spent less and less time in the academy and more and more time here, dreaming of far-off places and futures—

  A white flapping motion caught her eye. There along the shore, between two fingers of stone, something was moving. It looked like a seagull’s wing, only too large. A pelican? A white sea lion? Jhoira blinked, rubbing her eyes. The sea and sky were dazzling here. Maybe it was only a glaring bit of foam.

  No, it was more than that. It looked like fabric—perhaps another student? Jhoir
a slid from the sandstone ledge and eased herself down the tumbled hillside. One edge of the white fabric was tied to something rigid—a spar. It was a sail. Jhoira descended more quickly. Her sandal soles slid on pea-gravel and sand. She thrashed past a brake of grass and clambered down the cleft between two wind-carved stones.

  The space gave out onto a wide beach of beige sand, broken by rills of craggy black stone. Above one such rill, a lateen-rigged sail jutted flaglike from a shattered wooden hull. The impact had staved the boat’s prow and splintered the timbers amidships. Since then, the rocks had chewed away at the frame, each new wave grinding the hull again on the ragged stones.

  Jhoira approached cautiously. So few ships arrived at Tolaria. Most were the academy’s own supply vessels, captained by seamen hand-picked by Master Malzra. The island was too remote, too removed from trade routes to attract other ships. This boat must have drifted for some distance off course before crashing. Perhaps it was abandoned. Perhaps its crew had been washed overboard. Jhoira craned her neck as she neared, looking for signs of life in the ruined hulk. Her sandal prints filled with salty water behind her. She reached the stony outcrop and climbed up above the pitching wreck.

  It was a small craft, the sort that might have been manned by a crew of five or a crew of one. The deck was in disarray—lines lashing loosely, small barrels rolling with each sea surge. The hatch was open, and in the dark hold Jhoira glimpsed gulls fighting over bits of hard-tack that had spilled from broken crates. The mainmast was cracked, though it still held aloft the raked sail, and the mainsail’s sheet was cleated off, as if the boat had been at full sail when it struck the stone. It must have run aground last night, when the Glimmer Moon had been obscured by a midnight storm. The bow was gone entirely, but the stern remained. A narrow set of stairs led downward to a small doorway. The captain’s quarters would lie beyond.

  “What are you doing?” Jhoira asked herself worriedly as she clambered down the boulder where the ship was impaled, lifted one leg over the starboard rail, and hauled herself onto the pitching deck. “This thing could come loose any moment and roll over and drag me out to sea.”

  Even so, she crawled forward, reached the set of stairs that led down to the captain’s quarters, and descended. She pulled open the red door and cringed back from the hot, stale air within. The space was dark and cramped. With each wave surge, the floor clattered with junk—a map tube, a lodestone, a stylus, a wrecked lantern, spanners, a slide rule, and other indistinguishable items. To one side of the cabin, a small table hugged the wall. To the other was a pair of bunks. The bottom bed held a still figure.

  Dead, Jhoira thought. The man lay motionless, despite the tossing sea. His face was tanned beneath curls of golden hair. His jaw was shaggy with a week’s growth of beard. His hands, large and strong, were laid across his chest in the attitude of death. Jhoira backed away. Perhaps this was a plague ship, this man the last to succumb, with no one to throw him overboard. She’d been a fool to climb aboard.

  Then he moved. He breathed, and she knew, even if he was plagued, she could not abandon him. Without another moment’s hesitation, Jhoira crossed the crowded cabin, stooped beside the bunk, and lifted the man. She had always been strong. The Ghitu of Shiv had to be strong. Shifting the man to her shoulder, she struggled out of the cabin and up the stairs. Navigating the rubble-strewn deck with a man on her shoulder was difficult, and Jhoira stumbled twice. Gritting her teeth in determination, she made the rail. With a heart-rending leap, she reached the rock and clung there.

  As if shifted by her jump, the broken craft heeled away from the crag. A wave crashed into it, lifting it up, and with a briny surge, the boat scraped up toward Jhoira and her charge. She clambered to a higher spot on the rock. The wave tumbled back from shore, taking the hulk with it. The mast rolled under and snapped like a twig. Shroudlike, the sail wrapped the splintered boat as it heaved outward on the retreating wave. Broken barrels and other debris boiled in the wake of the boat.

  Panting, Jhoira watched the broken mass of wreckage bob out into deeper water. The next wave rolled it once more, and then the ship disappeared. For some time she could see it, moving in the undertow like some white leviathan.

  Jhoira waited for a break in the waves and climbed down from the stone. She crossed the sandy berm, tempted to set the man down there. A darting glance up at the hilltop told her that no other students or scholars had seen the shipwreck or knew of the man, but others might come soon. The man would be as good as dead. Malzra did not suffer the arrival of strangers on his island paradise, and the students were sworn to report any such castaways they discovered. Jhoira planned to report this one, of course, but she didn’t want anyone else to know about him—not yet.

  Strong though she was, the climb from the shore to her hideaway was a hot labor. When she arrived, she laid the man down on the sunny stretch of sandstone where she had spent so many afternoons. She checked for breath and pulse, found both, and set a hand on his brow to check for fever. He felt warm, though that might have been only from the sunlight. There was a better test for fever. Her heart pounding, she leaned over and kissed his forehead.

  “Hot. Yes. Very hot,” Jhoira said breathlessly.

  She removed her outer cloak, snagged a bit of scrub, and propped the fabric up over his face, shielding him from the sun. She retrieved a small canteen from her belt, parted the man’s lips, and poured a cool trickle of water into his mouth.

  He was beautiful—tan, strong, tall, and mysterious. That was the most important thing of all. The last drops fell from the canteen.

  “You stay here,” she whispered, patting his shoulder. “Don’t let anybody see you. I’ll go get more water and blankets—supplies. I’ll take care of you. Stay here.”

  Heart fluttering in her breast like a caged bird, Jhoira hurried away from her secret spot and her secret stranger.

  Her footsteps had hardly faded beyond the rocky rise when the stranger’s blue eyes opened. There was a gleam in them, something vaguely metallic. It might have been only the silver shimmer of clouds reflecting there, but there might have been something else to that gleam, something mechanical, something menacing.

  Monologue

  At last, Urza has done it, making a machine that really lives. He’s been working for three thousand years to devise such a thing. Now that he has one, he doesn’t know what to do with him.

  The silver man is engineered to let Urza return in time, even farther back than those three thousand years, to the time of the ancient Thran. Urza hopes the probe can reach the time of that ancient race, some six millennia in the past. If Urza himself could reach such a time, he could prevent the Thran from transforming into the race of half-flesh, half-machine abominations that seek to destroy life on Dominaria, thereby rectifying the error he and his brother Mishra made in opening the doors to Phyrexia.

  I’ve pointed out that unmaking the Phyrexians is tantamount to slaying all of us who have lived in this world since their creation. Still, Urza would rather wipe the slate clean than deal with his past—just as he did at Argoth.

  The disturbing thing is, he is making all the same mistakes over again. If he could only have embraced his brother instead of attacking him—if he could only have apologized for his arrogance and obsession and been reconciled—the Brothers’ War would never have been fought, the brotherhood of Gix would never have gotten a foothold in the world, and Argoth and most of Terisiare would not have been destroyed. If he had worked with his brother instead of against him, combining their genius and the power of both halves of the stone they had discovered, the pathway from Phyrexia might have been cut off the very day it was accidentally opened.

  Reconciliation is not in the man any more than regret or remorse or friendship. Every sin of omission Urza committed against his brother, he repeats now against his own students…and his newborn silver man.

  —Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria

 
The students were gone from the laboratory. Only Master Malzra, his trusted associate Barrin, and the silver man remained among the dark implements and ubiquitous sketches.

  “You’ve learned much in your first day,” said Barrin gently. “We have been observing, remotely. You have interacted well.”

  “I have a friend,” the silver man volunteered.

  A creased smile played across Barrin’s face. “Yes. Teferi, my prodigal prodigy—we know about that.”

  “He told me many things,” the probe continued. His voice was edged with suspicion. He explained the academy to me. He has named me Arty Shovelhead.”

  The mage sighed in irritation. “Teferi is a brilliant young mage—my most promising student—but he likes to stir up trouble. He makes things twice as hard for himself, and three times as hard for everyone else—”

  “Teferi is a good first friend,” interrupted Malzra with uncharacteristic alacrity. He glanced between the silver man and the man of flesh, then seemed to withdraw behind his glimmering eyes. “After all, Barrin, you said the probe has emotions—needs friends.”

  “Yes,” the mage said, diverting the conversation at its awkward turn. “Master Malzra is eager for you to begin the experiments you were created to carry out. That’s why we called you back this evening.”

  Barrin moved to one wall, opened a small hatch, and drew forth a long pole three times his height. At the tip of the pole was a small hook. Barrin hoisted the hook to the ceiling, engaged it in a hidden slot, and pulled downward once. A large panel in the dome shifted and then slowly separated from the smooth curve. On hydraulic rods, the panel eased downward from the dome. A large, complex machine of glass cylinders, metal casings, and snaking tubes emerged. Lamplight glowed from the descending apparatus, ten times more massive than the silver man himself.