46
34 Quad 2471 R.E.
Faelyna took only three steps before the corridors beside and overlapping the one that she, Eltyn, and Rhyana had taken began to contract and expand, getting dimmer and then increasingly brighter with each expansion…and each step. After another few yards, the glare was blinding.
Eltyn squinted so that his eyes were barely slits. He had no idea where they were going.
Faelyna slowed and stopped. So did the other two.
The light dimmed, slowly, and until the three stood in a long corridor that stretched ahead of them, disappearing into the distance as a silvered point of light.
Eltyn turned and glanced back over his shoulder, past Rhyana. The hexagonal door through which they had stepped was now open. He blinked, but nothing changed. “Do we go on?”
“Let’s see.” Faelyna took another step forward, and the corridor twisted, and light flared. She stopped.
Eltyn turned around and took one step, then another, past Rhyana and toward the still-open doorway. Nothing happened. He looked back at Faelyna. “I think we head back.”
“For now,” she agreed, turning and joining him.
They retraced their steps and made their way through the hexagonal door. Eltyn shook his head, almost resignedly. He couldn’t help but wonder exactly what had happened and where the corridor led—to the eastern end of the MCC, some two thousand kays away?
The dead riffie was in the same slumped position where they had left him, and the images of equipment on the walls flickered in and out of focus, shifting colors now and again.
Eltyn looked back again. The door to the long corridor was still open. “Let’s go up to the equipment and see if we can figure out what it shows.”
Rhyana sniffed. “The air smells different. Sort of damp.”
“The ventilators aren’t working,” Eltyn said. “The station closed the ducts, or the debris did, and I shut down the system right after the impact.”
“It does feel more humid,” acknowledged Faelyna. “We’re still seeing equipment around us.” She stepped toward the silver-flickering images, then stopped and fumbled in her belt pouch, extending what looked to be a folded scrap of something.
The scrap touched the edge of the image and passed through it, then seemed to double, and the second ghostly folded scrap flared instantly, and dust sifted down toward the stone floor.
Faelyna still held the first scrap. Her brows furrowed.
“Real and not real?” Eltyn’s words sounded inane, at least to him.
“I wonder,” replied Faelyna. “We might as well see if our equipment is still there.” She started up the ramp.
All three of them stopped at the top of the ramp. Everything had changed. The main chamber was filled with silver light, but dark rust-brown consoles seemed to be everywhere, leaving corridors to the ramps and to where the doors were—or had been.
Yet as he watched, Eltyn could see the consoles shifting, and, abruptly, they were all dark gray, and the intensity of the light increased once more.
Where are we?
That Rhyana’s voice came to Eltyn in the same manner as a private comm pulse stopped him from asking an almost identical question.
It might be when…not where, replied Faelyna. We were just on the main level. That can’t have changed.
Doesn’t look the same to me, replied Rhyana.
A swirl of gray and scarlet appeared before them, momentarily coalescing into a figure in a scarlet singlesuit of some sort, only to be replaced by a figure in silver and gray, and then by one in pale ice-blue, before returning to the scarlet-clad figure.
Eltyn swallowed. Who…what…are we seeing…?
The figure’s mouth moved. …all event-points…all at once…Then he/she returned to an indistinct blur of fast-shifting shapes.
All event-points at once, mused Faelyna. That sounds like a theory of time.
No sequence or causality? Hasn’t that been discredited?
Politically, because the Ruche is founded on certainty and causality. The feeling of a laugh followed Faelyna’s words. There are a few theoreticians who might not think the universe is that certain.
What about universes? asked Eltyn, looking for the smile he knew he wouldn’t see amid the increasing light and shifting images.
That’s more likely in a multiverse—
A flare of light brighter than a nova and simultaneously darker than the depths reserved for unbelievers in the Ruche swept over Eltyn…and the chamber…
47
8 Tenmonth 1351, Unity of Caelaarn
The blinding silver light lessened and then dimmed, and Maertyn opened his eyes, only to find that scores of corridors swirled before him. Vertigo and nausea wrenched at him, and he immediately closed his eyes again.
Are you all right? As it had been with the woman in scarlet, Maarlyna’s voice was clear in his thoughts, not his ears.
I’m better…now. I opened my eyes…very disorienting. Where are we going? Maertyn grasped her smaller hand more firmly, holding on to the warmth of her presence.
To the center…or something like that.
The center of the canal? That’s a thousand kays to the east…
The sense of a soft laugh bathed him. A control center, I think. I can’t read the inscriptions on the wall…yet they’re familiar…and I feel as though I should.
Maertyn concentrated on holding her hand and trying to follow her lead, not that such was difficult, because she was walking in a straight line.
We’re going to stop and turn here. We’re almost there, I think.
Where?
Maarlyna didn’t answer, but guided him through what must have been a door or an archway, because the sleeve of his shoulder brushed against stone. Then she stopped.
Maertyn took another half-step, then halted as well.
You can open your eyes, dear. It shouldn’t be too bad.
Maertyn did. He found himself in a small chamber, no more than five yards by three, standing beside Maarlyna and facing a whirl of scarlet and gray that coalesced into a solid figure in a scarlet singlesuit, except that before the image or person solidified, a man in silver and gray stood there…
That…it was you… Maarlyna’s surprise went beyond the words in his head.
…only to be followed by a woman in pale ice-blue, before returning to the indistinct scarlet-clad figure.
Words echoed in Maertyn’s mind, but they were not directed at him. That he could sense.
The battle…not fought in one time…the choice…yours…to be key…keeper…of all those…choose fate…the universe…this event-point…only you…so few…ever…able to see…
For all his concentration, Maertyn could only grasp fragments of sentences or phrases, words clearly directed at Maarlyna, a conversation to which he was party only in the sense of a partly deaf man trying to understand a rapid exchange between two others in an ancient tongue.
Wait! That preemptory command was Maarlyna’s. She turned to face Maertyn. Even though her mouth opened, he could hear the words only in his mind. You need to know…
Know what? He offered a wry smile. I have the feeling I’m not going to like what I’m going to hear.
It’s not as bad as it could have been, dearest.
But…?
Would you want everything to end?
What do you mean…everything? Life? The world?
Slowly, she nodded. And I saw what I might be…and the awful emptiness that will happen if I don’t…
Can’t you…or this power you’re being offered…can’t you just deal with the Gaerda? he pressed.
When I’ve asked you about politics and the government, sometimes, you’ve said to me…it doesn’t work that way. This doesn’t work that way. If I choose…what I feel is right…things…between us, they’ll change.
How?
I’ll never be able to leave the station…I told you once that it was like coming home. I didn’t know how true that was…
&n
bsp; Maertyn just stood there, his eyes burning, and not because of everything shifting around him. Time seemed to freeze, as though he could not move. But…why?
Everything affects everything else… She swallowed.
Maertyn could see that, and the tears flowing from her eyes.
If you knew that Tauzn would destroy the world, what would you do? she asked after a time.
I still wouldn’t want to lose you. Yet he knew that those words were not an answer, not with the Gaerda waiting outside the station, and not with the tears in her eyes.
Neither one of us will die. Things will be…different.
Different? How? He paused. Can we be together? Can I touch and hold you?
If you wish…for as long as…we can.
What do you mean…if we wish?
I’ll be different. I’ll know more…I think. I’ll see things that will be hard for you to see.
Maertyn moistened his lips. Like the corridors that shift? They don’t for you, do they?
No. Not in the way you mean.
He just stood there, trying to think, looking at the woman he loved, and for whom…He pushed that thought away. He’d done what he’d done as much for himself as for Maarlyna, and she’d hung on to him even when she hadn’t understood. And now…it was his turn. “Where you go so will I go…” Those words were cribbed from somewhere in the past. That he also knew. He also understood that while no feeling was truly new, that lack of novelty did not mean lack of truth…or love. And yet…how could he let go…?
How could he not…when she had already been through so much?
Finally, he looked at her again. I love you. I trust you. Do what you feel is right.
I love you…more than you know.
Maarlyna turned slightly and stepped forward. So did the indistinct figure…and they merged. Just as suddenly, Maertyn and Maarlyna stood alone in a small room. Thin consoles sheathed in golden-silver light lined the walls. Several panels on the consoles displayed stylized digits he could read, and letters he could not. At the same time, he had the feeling that the consoles were both there…and not there…although they did not flicker in and out of existence.
“What happened?” Maertyn swallowed.
The woman before him had Maarlyna’s features and slim figure, but the amber eyes were now silver, and her hair was a shade that somehow combined gold and silver without appearing old. And she wore the scarlet singlesuit.
“You…you’re the one, now, who appeared in the tube-train station?”
“Not exactly. That was a probability construct of the…canal.” A sad smile crossed her lips. “I have a faint recollection of that, just as my memories of the Maarlyna who was before you healed her are faint.”
“Why you?” asked Maertyn.
Maarlyna looked at him. “Why me? Did you hear what she said?”
He shook his head, trying to concentrate on his wife…if she were any longer just his wife.
“She said that I have less knowledge than others, but that knowledge can be learned. What cannot be learned is to see things as they are…as once in ancient times, a poet said, to see them played upon a blue guitar…” Maarlyna offered an embarrassed smile, one that recalled the woman he loved. “I couldn’t make up words like that, you know?”
Maertyn had liked the flow of those words, and the feeling they evoked, but could only guess at the instrument to which they referred. “But…what was she?…and you?”
“She was the construct…the…pattern…the knowledge…of the last keeper of the Bridge…the canal.” Maarlyna took his hand, and hers was cool, but still warm enough for him to know that she was indeed still there. “We need to go back. I…we have some things to do.”
“Where?”
“Back in the station. It’s easier there, or it will be for them.”
“Them? Are the black-shirts in the station? How could they—”
“No. These aren’t the Gaerda. I can’t explain yet, not exactly, because I’m still two people, except I’m not, and I’m afraid if I don’t do what I must while I still know what it is, I won’t be either.” Maarlyna began to walk back along the corridor, now lit in the pervasive silver-gold, but without any consoles.
“What are you going to do?”
“Prevent the unraveling of eternity…in our universe. If I can…The keeper…the pattern…said I could…”
The unraveling of the universe? Maertyn wanted to shake his head. In the space of a few days, his once-quiet wife had gone from someone he thought he knew into someone very different, more confident…and someone or even something possibly far more powerful. And he really didn’t understand why or how, all because he’d maneuvered himself into getting assigned an obscure research project, as much to protect her as anything.
He found he had to walk quickly to keep up with her as she walked through what was, or had been, the lower kitchen area and up the ramp to the main level and into his laboratory. There she glanced around. So did Maertyn. All his tables and equipment were there, but overlying them were colored but more than ghost-like images of consoles sheathed in light.
Maarlyna kept looking, although Maertyn had the feeling she was looking somewhere he could not see.
Then the light shifted again, and Maarlyna seemed to shimmer, as if she were there, and not quite there, except she was. Before her, as if through a shining veil or a misty mirror, stood two indistinct figures, although one was apparently a tall woman clad in pale golden armor, or something similar.
Maarlyna said something, but it meant nothing to Maertyn. He concentrated, realizing that the little he “heard” was in his mind and thoughts.
…face the end of eternity…
Why…nothing fixed before? asked one of the ghost images.
You could not see it…needed key and keeper…no time…You perceive…continuity as…temporal…no time. There are only…event-points.
…something you’re doing for us?
That is what a keeper does.
With those words, Maertyn sensed sadness…melancholy. He wondered why and lost his concentration on what was going on before him.
…universe…a pivot point…battle…that will decide whether all continues.
What about you?
I am the keeper…last keeper fought…the ring in the heavens…
Maertyn tried to follow the seemingly mental interchanges, but lost much of what Maarlyna was saying. He did get a sense that whoever she addressed faced a far bigger problem than he and she did, and that the political machinations of Tauzn were almost trivial by comparison.
Suddenly, the light changed, and the two of them stood alone in the workroom.
Maarlyna looked very tired.
“Are you all right?”
“We need to eat.”
“Can you tell me what all that was about?” Maertyn rubbed his forehead, trying to massage away the headache he hadn’t realized that he even had.
“After we eat. Doing…that…is harder than I thought.”
“Doing what?”
“Talking across time. But time doesn’t work that way.” She turned. “I have to eat something. I’ll tell you then.”
Her face was pale. He didn’t say another word, just took her hand and walked out of the laboratory and down the ramp to the kitchen area.
48
20 Siebmonat 3123, Vaniran Hegemony
The darkness vanished. Duhyle and Helkyria stood in her workroom—or what had been her workroom. The worktables and equipment were there, untouched, but over and around them were ghost images of consoles sheathed in silver-gold light. Behind them, Duhyle sensed Symra, but he did not look back because between Helkyria and Duhyle stood a woman in a scarlet singlesuit. Her hair was silver-gold. Her eyes were silver, her features fine on an oval face. Behind and to her left was another figure, in silver and gray, barely visible, an image as insubstantial as those of the consoles.
You face the end of eternity. The words filled Duhyle’s thoughts.
&nb
sp; That’s possible, replied Helkyria.
Why was nothing settled or fixed before? asked Duhyle.
The woman in scarlet smiled, apologetically. It was as fixed as it ever was. You could not see it as such.
Why can we now? Helkyria’s words were hard.
The woman in red glanced to the silver-shadowed figure to her left, as if inquiring, then finally spoke. You needed key and keeper.
Who or what are the key and keeper? asked Helkyria. Why would the canal need that, since it stands in de pen dent of time?
Not in de pen dent, warrior woman, not in de pen dent. The scarlet woman tilted her head, as if listening, then nodded. There is…no time…You perceive…continuity as…temporal. The canal…Bifrost Bridge…is linked to all event-points in this universe over which it was…constructed.
Duhyle frowned. The keeper sounded hesitant, as if she was having trouble explaining. Were the Vanir that backward? Or…Why hadn’t the keeper appeared at first? Or was it simply a linguistic problem?
Time is a mere perception? interjected Helkyria. Then the synchronizer would not work…and we would not be here, wherever or whenever here is…
There is no time. There are only…event-points. The experience of those event-points creates the perception of time in all intelligences.
Duhyle slowly turned his head and looked at Helkyria, simultaneously wearing the ice-blue singlesuit and formfitting armor running from her neck to wrists and ankles and comprised of small diamond-shapes of silver-gold light.
…might be said to be the…commonality…behind all intelligence…
How did we get here? Helkyria’s question was as direct as a stunner bolt.
You are where you always were. The locking of the entrances to the Bridge was the first step in breaking the perceptual links to your event-points. Your…device…was the second. You can see all the event-points simultaneously…or you could if your perceptions were not conditioned to a limited set of points…
Who are you? How can you communicate with us? Why now? Earlier all we could make out were fragments.
With the range of all event-points, the systems attempted to address all possible inquiries…but you were not equipped…to limit…your focus on a unique set of points.
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