The kitchen was empty when I sat down for a bite of breakfast— cheese and bread, washed down with some citril. Outside the flat and mismatched panes, the purple of early dawn faded toward grey as the sun neared the underside of the horizon. No one else was awake. Wryan would probably be the next one up, but I intended to be gone before she rose.
Saying goodbye to her was getting too hard, and there would be all too many goodbyes over the days and seasons ahead.
I sliced off another hunk of cheese, sealed the wedge, and put it back in the cooler. The battery charge was running low, but there wasn’t time to fix that right then. We missed the luxury of the broadcast power that had been one of the first casualties of the Frost Giant attack.
Paring the cheese into smaller slices, I put them on the second slice of rough grain bread and began to eat, finally washing the remnants down with the last of the citril in my mug.
The grey dawn became a greyer morning as I stood, seeing that there would be no sunrise, not with the heavy clouds overhead and the promise of more rain. After I rinsed out the mug and stacked it in the rack, I swung up my backpack.
“Ready to go, I see.” Wryan stood by the open archway that led to the room the three women shared. Her sandy hair was tousled, and her small feet were bare, as if she had pulled on the sweater and trousers on the run.
“No sense in wasting time.” I looked at her, nearly my size, almost eye to eye, and set the pack on the chair.
She smiled sadly.
I smiled back.
She grinned.
I grinned. “Not much good at goodbye.”
“Neither am I.”
Somehow, this time I knew what to do. I reached for her and pulled her close. In the end, she was holding me as tightly as I held her. She was shaking, as if she were crying.
I wanted to say something, but couldn’t. So I kissed her forehead, and brushed away some tears.
Funny, it took me until then to realise I was shaking too, but Wryan touched my cheek and leaned back to look at me. I kissed her, but, again, she kissed me even as my lips reached for hers.
That was the first time we had held each other, or kissed.
For a long time after that lasting kiss, neither one of us could do anything but hold the other.
“You deserve better . . .” I had to say it. What was I but an under-educated and spoiled gentry brat who could time-dive and survive trouble? “. . . and I’m too young, too shallow for you . . .”
“Let me worry about that, Sammis. The age doesn’t matter, not at all, not the way things are looking . . .”
“True . . .” I had to grin ruefully, but lost it when I felt she meant something else. “What do you mean?”
“That’s my secret until you come back . . .”
“Working on my curiosity, then, Lady?”
Her arms were tighter around me, and I gave in, letting my lips find hers.
How much time passed, I did not know, but it was definitely later when we let go, except for two hands tightly intertwined.
“When you come back, we’ll talk about it.”
“About it?”
“My secret, as you call it. It’s already becoming obvious, but . . .”
I nodded. Whatever she had discovered was not something that should get to Odin Thor, at least not until we had worked out how to handle it. That was becoming more and more our operating style.
She disengaged her hand from mine and straightened her sweater. “Now get out of here while we’re still relatively intact.”
I knew exactly what she meant. So I leaned toward her and brushed her lips, then leaned back and grabbed my pack. And I was undertime, knowing she was crying again and that I wasn’t in much better shape.
That’s why the first dive wasn’t much of a dive, just enough to get me into the abandoned polar space station. I’d checked earlier, and it still had an atmosphere.
Staggering out of the undertime, I was ready to bolt if the air had disappeared or turned foul, but neither had happened. So there I was, hovering in the old operations centre, swaying from side to side, ready to fall, except for the fact that I was weightless.
From the station’s size and equipment, it had to have been the base from which the ill-fated Mithradan planet-forming had been launched and supported. While I could have floated as easily as finding a place to light, I felt better with the illusion of sitting and strapped myself into one of the operations’ centre chairs, in front of a dull black screen.
My hands were still shaking, and that had never happened before. Then again, something like Wryan had never happened before. If I didn’t know better, I would have said that, tousled as she had been that morning, she looked more like my age than hers. Yet she had to be more like four times my age—at least.
But then, no one believed I was my own age either. People still thought of me as a school-age brat when they first saw me.
My thoughts were wandering because I did not want to deal with my entanglement with Wryan. So I pulled out the thin notebook and began to study the stellar/time maps I had so carefully tried to integrate.
Too many of the systems were blanks, meaning that they were either uninhabited or we had no information.
We couldn’t risk losing any divers, and that was a circular problem too. A good diver could skip undertime without getting frozen stiff or suffocated, but the good divers were those who could transport what we needed.
At that point, I groaned. Once again, I had missed the obvious. Sitting in an orbital space station filled with space suits designed for at least some hostile environments, I had a solution.
I dropped undertime and popped back into the kitchen where Wryan was staring out the window over a cup of something.
“Don’t move. I shouldn’t be back, but here’s an idea for the information we need—“
She looked at me, and from even across the room I could see her eyes were bloodshot.
“—on other systems.” I had to plunge on or I’d stop, and then I’d never leave. “You know the big orbital station? The one involved in the Mithrada fiasco? It’s got a bunch of space suits in it— not just one or two like you had in the lab. Put the marginal divers in suits and get them to scout systems. Just present time. If they find traces of civilisations or cultures, then someone else can follow up.”
“Like you?”
“Or you,” I added.
“Next time, we go together, Sammis Arloff Olon. Or you don’t go.”
I thought about that. “Let me think that over.”
“Please do, and I’ll put together a plan for your mapping idea while you follow the leads you have. Now kindly get on your way . . . and be careful.”
I nodded and ducked undertime, swallowing as I did. I couldn’t finish the swallow until I popped back out in the space station. Then I began looking at the maps.
Sertis was first on the list, a mere two stellar systems away.
L
SERTIS—WHAT SHOULD I say about the place?
Crowded, at least in the cities. I picked the largest one, at the inter-section of a large river and a wide bay filled with a range of vessels. Some were powered with energy flows I could sense from the undertime. Others were clearly sailing ships.
With each dive I had become more and more sensitive to the flows of energy from the now, perceived from the undertime. None of the other timedivers could sense them, but I suspected some would develop the ability with more experience. That made homing in on large energy concentrations easy; cities particularly.
That was about the only easy part.
First, I’m not a linguist. The gabble of voices was just that—verbal confusion. Second, the signs and written languages were even worse. Third, what I was wearing was clearly enough to attract unwanted attention. The Sertians apparently were strong on flowing robes and hoods. The men were mostly bearded, and the women wore colourful scarves.
The clothing was the easiest to remedy. Slipping under the now, I located and libe
rated an appropriately-sized cloak, along with an exterior belt and purse. After the Llordian mess, I was more than a little apprehensive about walking alone in places where my disposal would be easy from a distance. So I stayed with the crowds near what seemed to be an open market. The air was like an oven. Only the lack of humidity made either the temperature or the odour bearable. And I had thought the damps were rank!
“Hslop?” A ragged child grinned at me. His face was almost squarish, and his hair was black and tight-curled around an olive face.
Since I didn’t know what the urchin meant, I scowled.
“Hslop? Hslop?”
I just turned away, ducking between two substantial matrons, and moving toward a line of stands, each draped in purple.
Despite my hopes, I was still staggered. The first stand had a wide range of steel knives, real steel, laid out. I nodded and passed by.
“Hssilinglop?” asked the woman tending the stand.
I ignored her, wishing I could understand the language.
The second stand was more interesting, with an assortment of hand tools. I watched as the owner and a thin young man bargained over a hatchet. Finally, I drifted on, noting that the urchins still trailed me, at a distance.
A quarter of the way around the market, past the food stands and the fabrics, I found the power tools. Some of them looked like they ran on etheline, or some liquid hydrocarbon. One or two were battery-powered, but they were covered with a film of dust. Several were not familiar, but one looked like a tree saw. I could make out another saw with an assortment of circular blades that looked as though it would cut finished timbers and boards, and a power drill.
“Hssilinglop?” asked the stall tender.
I pointed to the circular saw, thinking that we could try it out. If it worked, someone like Gerloc could get some more.
“Res thorp.”
Not knowing what “res thorp” meant, I pawed around in the purse that I had liberated, and offered a small silver coin—far less than an earlier customer had paid for the tree saw.
He held up four fingers, pointing to the silver coin. I didn’t have four of them, but I did have a gold piece of some sort. So I held up two fingers. He gave me a sad face. I shrugged.
Finally, he held up three.
I winced, thinking about having to show the gold piece.
He shrugged and gave me two and a crooked finger. I guessed that was a half.
I scrabbled through the purse and came up with two silvers, and a quarter of a silver, it looked like, plus some smaller and lighter coins. I put them all on the wooden counter.
He shrugged, trying not to smile too much, and took them. I think the smaller coins added up to more than half a silver because he dragged out a carrying case and threw in all the blades, plus a wrench and a small can of lubricant.
I walked to the nearest alley and disappeared undertime. Someone else could certainly handle Sertis, even if I had to write a manual. That would provide goodies for both the divers and Odin Thor.
LI
COLLECTING WEAPONS IS hard work for a timediver. A knife I could carry, but it would be useless against a Frost Giant. A projectile rifle presented the same problem.
Nuclear weapons worked effectively on the Frost Giants. But nukes also destroyed large chunks of real estate and possessed too much mass for a timediver to carry. From what Wryan had determined, particle beams also would work, but not lasers. The difference was academic, since any particle beam ever built by Westron with enough force to fragment a Frost Giant wouldn’t fit on a steamer, much less on a timediver’s back.
Only high-tech worlds can build small and destructive weapons, and high-technology cultures tend to be shortlived because they are complex and require a continuing high level of education. There are always exceptions, but the exceptions presented another problem.
Not that either kind of high-tech system was hard for me to find because their energy use beat through the undertime like a flare.
High-tech meant unstable and short-lived or stable and lasting. The first of the longline high-tech cultures I found was Muria. That’s what I called it, but who knows what they called themselves?
Tall and slender people, bipedal, with brains and eyes in their heads, finely scaled green skin and white silk hair. Scales and hair don’t go together? On Muria they did.
Three sexes, or maybe four, and they all looked alike. The Murians had created a paradise. Golden-fronded trees lined paths that were permanent, yet cushioned every footstep and wound between close-linked clusters of hive houses. Each hive house group was separated from other groups by a varying mixture of orchards, forests, and low-effort cultivated fields. All their nourishment seemed to come from vegetation, but some of the fruits or vegetables looked more like meat.
It rained on Muria just enough, and the cloud patterns kept a favourable range of temperature and breezes. Just enough Murians were born, so that while the settlements changed, the total number of them stayed about the same. Murian medicine, or genetics, or culture, provided long lives, and Murian science had reduced power generation to small fusion generators. Too big to carry, but small enough to fit into a large closet. They were fusion powered, that I could tell from the energy flows.
I couldn’t believe the planet. So I went backtime for two or three centuries. I couldn’t see any differences. Then I went foretime, and there wasn’t much change there, except that the locations of some towns changed.
After that, I started looking for weapons, and I couldn’t find any. I could dive into hidden places, but those were very few. I could seize any document or text, but I couldn’t read them. I could disassemble any machine, but those I understood I didn’t need, and those I didn’t understand I couldn’t figure out.
Understand, these Murian people were intelligent—and nonviolent. Short of creating a one-person crime wave, there didn’t seem to be any way I could persuade them to employ force. Violence was becoming a last resort for me, not that I hadn’t employed it effectively.
The Murians had an interstellar drive, and a few explorers who used it. That was where I focused my efforts and where I came up with the duplicator, an accident if ever there was one, since I was looking for weapons.
Their interstellar ships were small, too small to handle distances without supplies and more spare parts and equipment. But they did well, quite well. So I continued to watch from the undertime until I discovered the strange gadget in the ship that duplicated everything from food to tools, with apparently no input except electrical power.
Then the real work began. I tracked a new ship backtime to its construction until I could watch a team of Murians install the duplicator. That night it was my turn.
The shell of the ship was quiet as I broke out of the undertime. No alarms, no bells, not even any energy flows. With my recently acquired Murian tools, I studied the duplicator up close—an elongated octagonal donut that fit on a cabinet about half the size of the kitchen table in our cottage. The central “hole” was where they put items to be duplicated and at first glance seemed limited to items about two handspans square. Because the Murians built most equipment in modular form, the size limit probably didn’t cause that many problems. In any case, it was better than anything we had, because we had nothing to speak of, and less on the way.
The duplicator was in a separate compartment next to what I figured were the fusion generators. A glistening blue wire ran from the octagonal machine into a square junction box. In a few moments I had removed the cover of the junction box and set it out of the way on the green-grey deck.
The Murians liked their planet humid, and inside the ship was no exception. I stopped and wiped the sweat off my forehead and out of my eyes. A deep breath followed, and I ignored the musky smell that was part me, part leftover Murians.
Inside the junction box the glistening blue wire split into three smaller insulated filaments. The uncovered end of each filament was purplish. Each was wound around a metal plug the size of my thu
mb. With some effort, I carefully unhooked the insulated filament wires from the three plugs and withdrew the wire through the side opening in the junction box.
Now the duplicator was free of the power system, and all I had to do was release it from its mountings. That meant standing nearly on my head to release the bolts anchoring the machine to the built-in counter. There were eight bolts, and I had to rest after twisting each one free. Rested and wiped my forehead and tried to get the sweaty salt out of my eyes.
My tunic was dripping, and the ship definitely smelled like sweating human being by the time I twisted the last bolt free and laid it on the floor next to the seven others.
After wiping my forehead again, I tried to lift the duplicator. I could not break it free of the counter, although it seemed to wobble sideways. I let go and sat on the deck to catch my breath and to think.
One Murian had carried the device, and they weren’t that much bigger than I was.
I took a swig from my small water bottle. Not that I really needed it in most circumstances, but it did make me feel more comfortable.
Next I checked under the counter, looking for another bolt or fastening. There weren’t any. Then I studied the eight-sided machine itself, to see if there were brackets holding it on the sides. Nothing.
I pulled on it. Again, no result. I pushed it toward the bulkhead, losing my balance because it slid so quickly, then stopped cold just before hitting the bulkhead, apparently locked in place.
After some more experimentation, I discovered that it had been threaded through a series of “lock” positions on the metallic plastic bench top. Once I finally manoeuvred it free, still having to stop to wipe the sweat off my forehead, I set it on the deck.
I rested, wondering if it would take this long for everything I at-tempted to make off with. Standing up, I checked the counter surface on which the duplicator had rested, running my fingers over the flat metallic plastic or plastic metal. The surface was absolutely smooth to my touch— absolutely.
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