Timediver's Dawn

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  I turned and leaned against the wall, wondering which uniform I should wear to school, and realised my posterior was sore, very sore. From what I could see, lifting the nightshirt and craning over my own shoulder at the reflection of my backside, I had the beginning of a nasty bruise.

  So I had not been dreaming. Now I was going crazy. First, out-of-season freezing rain, and now dreams about strange towers that left me rods from where I went to sleep.

  “Sammis!”

  My father’s call halted any further speculation, since I had only a few minutes before I would be expected at the table, and fewer minutes after that if I wanted a ride in the steamer that would halve the walk to the Academy. My father did not believe in making things easier, nor did he believe in making things artificially harder. If he were going my way on part of his drive to work at the Imperial offices in Bremarlyn, I could ride as far as our paths converged . . . if I were ready, and if he had no other plans.

  I raced for the washroom, mine alone, and certainly one of the few advantages of being an only child.

  As I completed washing my face, I looked into the mirror. The face of my dream, the face of the man who had looked at me through the curtains of blackness, had been my face—older, more experienced, and unlined, but my face.

  That made the whole mystery less real. How could I ever see myself anywhere? It had to have been a dream.

  Since the sun promised to warm the ice, I chose a midweight uniform, the same blue and silver tunic over dark blue trousers, with the black boots we all had to wear.

  “Sammis!”

  “Coming!” I grabbed my pack and cloak and tumbled down the front stairs, taking a quick look at the spot on the floor behind the front door. No sign of water or water damage.

  Both of them were at the table. Mother was dressed to go to the city—Inequital, not Bremarlyn—with leather dress boots, wide trousers and matching jacket. Of course, she would be wearing the flynyx coat Father had given her for their anniversary and driving the gold steamer. An independent woman, my mother, despite my father’s importance as the pre-eminent regional solicitor of taxes and commerce. That he could also claim to be a descendent of the old dukes of Ronwic did not disturb her either. Nor did it seem to impress her. Little of pomp seemed to faze her.

  I could tell she had been up early and had completed her morning workout, although she had probably not taken a run, as she usually did. Once or twice I had tried to follow her regimen and decided against it. She was only a shade taller than I was; but underneath her careful tailoring were muscles it would take years before I could match. Yet she never made an issue about it. She just got up and did it, without fail, every morning.

  She had taken a degree herself, in economic theory and practice, and had published one or two monographs, claiming that it had been “just to keep her hand in,” whatever that meant. She also was far more physical than my father, both with her own exercise room in the cellars and her ongoing classes in Delkaiba—that was the old Westron martial art. All the same, I was never quite sure what she did while I was in school or on her infrequent but long and solitary “vacations.” Neither she nor my father ever mentioned it. And, somehow, my innumerable questions never quite got answered.

  “Have some sausage, Sammis. Need some protein, not just starch.”

  I reached for the least burned sausage on the platter.

  “What do you think about this business on Mithrada?”

  “What business?” I was looking for an unburned roll, preferably to avoid having to take another sausage.

  “The strange reports about the project problems. You don’t discuss it in school?”

  My mouth was full. So I nodded. I hadn’t paid that much attention. So the emperor wanted another planet. There was still plenty of room in Westron, and more than that in Eastron.

  “Waste of money. Terrible waste of tax revenues . . .” mumbled my father.

  My mother frowned, which was also strange. Usually she wore an exercise singlesuit to breakfast and never showed other than a pleasant disposition. Again, she changed the subject quickly. “Are you sure that uniform is warm enough?”

  “Ice storm was a freak,” I mouthed. “Melting off already.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” That was Father.

  “All too many freak occurrences,” murmured Mother, so softly that Father, with his bad ear that he refused to have examined, heard nothing. I looked at her, and she shook her head minutely, as if to tell me not to ask. I didn’t. Instead, I grabbed the last roll, taking bites first from an almost ripe chyst and then from the roll.

  Father pursed his lips and took a last sip from his cup. “Coming?”

  I swallowed the last mouthful, wiped my face, and nodded. “Meet you at the steamer.”

  IX

  “WHAT HAPPENED . . . ?”

  “Get the lights!” That was Jeen Kryrel. He’d been trapped in his uncle’s silo as a youngster, still didn’t like darkness, even dim corners.

  The buzz of the overhead lamps had disappeared with the lights themselves.

  “Silence!” Dr. Yellertond’s voice cut right through the gloom of the laboratory.

  Since I hadn’t been looking forward to the lab anyway, the power loss was almost welcome. The heavy slatetopped tables and the aged wood cabinets reeked of sulphur and flame . . . and of age. My father had gone to the Academy, and his father.

  “You may remain at your stations while I check with the magister. You may talk quietly. Anyone whose voice I can hear will draw holiday duties.”

  The groan at that was clear. Dr. Yellertond loved to assign holiday duties.

  “First power failure I’ve been in . . .”

  “Do you suppose it was the satellite relay?”

  “Probably just an interrupter here.”

  I didn’t say anything. There had already been too many coincidences, and the power loss had something to do with the Mithrada situation. For some reason, I thought about my mother. She had not been planning to go to Inequital the night before. Yet she had been up and dressed, and very preoccupied.

  She had friends in the capital—that was why she spent so much time there, she said, but that would not have explained her worried expression. She never looked worried. And the ice storm— that was unusual.

  “What do you think, Sammis?”

  “Yes, what’s the runt think?”

  What I thought about was giving Reylin a broken leg. My mother had instructed me in Delkaiba, just enough to make me cautious about trying to use it. But Reylin was always asking for a lesson of sorts.

  “I think that the lights are going to stay out—for a long time.” The words popped out before I could draw them back.

  “Now the runt’s a prophet . . .”

  Already the lab was getting chilly, or it seemed that way to me, and the sulphur smell was more pungent than usual. The bruise I had gotten in falling on the icy front walk in my nightmare, or whatever, hurt if I sat on the lab stool wrong.

  “Silence!” Dr. Yellertond was standing in the laboratory doorway.

  The murmurs and whispers vanished into the gloom of the big class-room.

  “The power outage is not local, but stems from a failure in the satellite relay systems. You are all dismissed. Anyone who does not live within walking distance of the Academy may wait in the library or the main anteroom of the administration building.”

  The tall, thin professor watched as we gathered books and notes together, and as we trooped out into the corridor, boots scuffling on the polished stone floors.

  Like everything else in Westron the Academy was constructed mostly of stone, with slate roofing on heavy timbers. Interior walls were either panelled or plastered and replastered.

  That was because most of the petroleum and iron had been exhausted by the First Civilisation, or so Dr. Editris had said. He claimed the failure of the few Eastron oil reserves had led to the fall of the Eastron Republic . . . but that was history. I wondered if my fa
ther would be home when I got there, or if I would have to avoid Shaera by myself. Certainly, if the power link had failed for the Academy, there would be no power for the small Imperial complex at Bremarlyn, or for the

  Revenue Court.

  “. . . could be serious . . .”

  “. . . first time we’ve been dismissed in mid-day . . .”

  Dr. Yellertond kept swinging around to find someone to glare at, but every time he started to turn the whispers disappeared. Allyson once had told me that the whispers at the girls’ academy—it was called Tyrnelle House—were far worse.

  Were they sending the girls home from Tyrnelle? If so, I could go over to the Davniadses. That would be better than staying at home with Shaera, who, for all her well-intentioned energy, would try to find something for me to do that I was really supposed to do. Allyson was interesting to talk to, even if she did look down on me.

  “Silence!” The word had always been Dr. Yellertond’s favourite, and he was not opposed to overusing it.

  By then, we had all straggled into the central robing hall, where our lockers lined the walls. More than half the upper classes were already there, and Dr. Yellertond winced as the whispers washed over and around him. The man should have been a mystic or a retreat academic, not a teacher of young adults.

  Finally, he shrugged, as if to wash his hands of us, and made a vague gesture, muttering something I could not hear.

  “Are we officially dismissed?” I asked Loiren, who was grabbing a heavy winter cloak from his locker, right next to mine.

  “That’s what the assistant magister announced, just before old quiet-ass brought you guys in.”

  I grabbed my own cloak. I’d tried to take the lightweight one that morning, but Shaera and my mother had forced the heavier one on me, and it was hard to argue against both of them successfully. Since I’d wanted to catch the steamer ride with Dad—it did save me nearly a kay in walking—I’d taken the heavy black one.

  Once I had the cloak, I took the pack, but I left all the books.

  “You aren’t taking your studies?” asked Loiren in surprise as he closed his locker.

  “Why bother? It should be a few days before we get power back, and they’ll have to review anyway.”

  “It’s your head, Sammis.”

  I ignored Loiren. He meant well, but there were too many coincidences, and I wanted to get to the Davniadses.

  Outside, it was still cold and sunny, and the wind coming up the hill from the west chilled my ears immediately. A good forty others were already marching down toward the road where most, I suspected, would find steamers to take them home. The bells in the Academy’s temple were ringing to announce dismissal.

  From the east, I could hear the lighter tones from Tyrnelle House, occasionally disappearing in the whistle of the wind. Clutching my cloak around me tighter, I was glad that I had not been successful in arguing for the lighter-weight overwear. Trudging down the paving stones toward the highway, I hunched up inside the heavy wool.

  Clouds were piling up on the horizon, and it looked like another storm was pelting Inequital. While the capital wasn’t visible from the low hills of Bremarlyn, I’d been there enough to imagine what it must be like, with sheets of heavy rain pouring through kay after kay of three, four, and even five story buildings—and the Grand Tower. Some of the anarchists claimed that the emperor and, before her death, his mother the Grand Empress, had used their power to keep other towers from being built.

  Hoping my mother had left before the storm had hit, I whistled one or two notes of the Marching Song, but the wind was too bitter to keep whistling. So I put my head down and lengthened my steps. Despite my size, I could walk, or run, faster than anyone at the Academy. Not that I was about to in the cold.

  By the time I started along the walking trail by the highway, uphill most of the way, my nose was running from the cold. The clouds from the west had begun to shut off the sunlight, and the wind was building up into a gale, bringing with it an acrid odour.

  Half a kay further, and I was looking for the occasional steamer that might be headed my way, but most people lived on the eastern side of Bremarlyn. We lived on the more isolated side, closer to Inequital and to the Revenue Court where my father practised.

  Another half a kay, and I had reached the side road that wound gently toward our land. My ears were numb, and my breath made me look like a malfunctioning steamer myself. The ground crackled underfoot, and whatever the storm brought it wouldn’t be rain, but snow or ice. Overhead, the clouds were thickening into an ugly grey.

  Wheeep! Wheeep!

  Waving from the window of the Davniadses’ slate grey steamer was Allyson. I stumbled over the half-frozen turf and into the rear seat. Allyson and her mother were in the front.

  “You look frozen, Sammis. What on earth are you doing out in this?”

  “Mother’s in Inequital, and Father is at work. At least he was. It was sunny when I left the Academy.”

  “I do hope your mother is all right, Sammis. All the communications links with the capital are out, just like the power.” Germania Davniads was a big woman with a tiny voice. Allyson had her father’s booming voice and both parents’ build, but she wasn’t overweight like her mother. She had a nice figure and a nice smile. She was a good head taller than me, not to mention a year or so older.

  As the steamer hummed up the road, I readjusted my cloak. There was no heat, though, and while I could feel the circulation returning to my fingers and toes, the absence of wind alone was not enough to immediately thaw me out.

  “I do hope Jerz managed to leave Jillriko early. He took the runabout.” Germania kept her eyes on the winding road as her small voice continued. “It’s such a long trip back, especially if the rain gets heavy, and that can easily happen at this time of year . . .”

  Allyson half-turned and ran her eyes over my cloak. “It’s too cold to rain, Mother. Don’t you think so, Sammis?”

  “Ice or snow, I suppose.”

  “I do hope that it isn’t ice. The runabout is so light, and the hill to our place is so steep . . . Sammis, would you like me to run you all the way up to your doorway?”

  “What . . . ?”

  “Mother wanted to know if you wanted to come over and have hot cider, or if you had to get home immediately,” added Allyson quickly.

  “Cider sounds good . . .”

  “Then we’ll just take you to our place. All right, Mother?”

  “If you think that is all right, dear. But won’t your father and mother worry? Especially in this weather . . . and if it gets icy . . .”

  By then, the steamer was nearing the turnoff for our drive. I looked up. A pair of soldiers stood by the drive, each carrying some sort of weapon.

  “Just keep going, Mother.” Allyson’s voice was commanding.

  “If you say so . . . dear . . . but . . . what are those men doing there? Doesn’t your father work for the government, Sammis? Is there something wrong?”

  Germania kept driving toward the Davniadses’, and the soldiers watched us go without even turning their heads.

  I felt cold again—very cold. Why would soldiers be stationed at our house? Did it have something to do with all the coincidences, or with the power losses?

  Allyson was looking at me. She raised her eyebrows.

  I shrugged, and shook my head. “Don’t know.” My words were barely more than mouthed.

  She nodded.

  Although I continued to study the lower part of our grounds until we started up the wide drive to the Davniadses’, nothing seemed changed—except for the soldiers.

  “Here we are . . . I do believe that I will put the steamer in the locker. The weather will not do it any good, and we certainly don’t plan to go anywhere . . .”

  “Sammis?”

  “No. When it’s time to go home, I’ll just take the back path. It’s sheltered most of the way, and it’s quicker than driving.” More important, I could take it and not be seen. Perhaps someone in
a case my father had been prosecuting had made a threat against him. That had happened once several years ago, and we had soldiers guarding the area for weeks. But nothing had ever happened.

  The steamer hummed to a stop inside the locker building.

  “Mother, if you would see to the cider, Sammis and I will drain the tank and close up . . .”

  “If you wouldn’t mind . . .”

  “It’s certainly no problem,” I volunteered.

  “Would you like your cider straight . . . or with chyst?”

  I opened the door and scrambled out, carefully checking the hinges before closing it. “With chyst, please.”

  The drainage hose was in about the same place as in our locker, and I unrolled it, attaching the funnel clip to the end. The grey steamer—the name plate said Altera—had one of the new side pipe drains, which made it easy.

  Unless it was going to be cold enough to freeze, steamers didn’t need to have their water drained, but Mother—she was the mechanical one—always insisted that both of ours be drained whenever they were not in use. Allyson didn’t object when I began to drain the water. It was almost clear, the sign of a well-maintained vehicle.

  Allyson was topping off the etheline, presumably so that she did not have to do it in the morning. But etheline never froze, not in Bremarlyn, anyway, although in places like Southpoint all the steamers had to have heating systems built into the water and fuel bunkers and even into the steamers themselves.

  I finished draining off the water and closed the steamer’s drain valve, then began coiling the hose. My hands were getting numb again, from the chill and the water I had spilled on them. Even inside the locker I could see the steam from my breath.

  “How are we going to have hot cider?” I asked. “There’s no power and no sunlight.”

  “There’s a small etheline burner in the kitchen. Mother insisted on it, and it does come in handy.” Allyson was wiping her hands on the towel by the pump handle.

  Straight black hair, but twisted up at her neck, dark blue eyes, and a warm smile—Allyson was nice-looking, and I enjoyed being around her, but more as if she were an older sister. She was just so much taller, and older, in so many ways, than I was.