Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations - 01 - Watching the Clock

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “Then nothing else matters, I know.” The Romulan rolled his eyes, then sobered. “If you do uncover any further evidence of a plot to start a war . . .”

  “We’ll share the relevant information with the other signatories,” Lucsly assured him. “But this will go easier if you can persuade the Pact as a whole to sign.”

  Revad nodded. “I’ll exert whatever pressure I can.”

  “Good. We’re all in this together, you know.”

  “I know, Lucsly. You taught me that.”

  After Revad signed off, Lucsly frowned, remembering something. He headed next door to Dulmur’s office. “Let me see those DNA scans from Naadri’s hotel.”

  Dulmur looked up. “You have something new?”

  “Maybe.” Despite Jena Noi’s instructions, the two agents had continued to probe into the Vard attack insofar as they were able. They’d discovered that Doctor Naadri had been in Kemrel Municipality on the day of the bombing, and the Paraagan physicist had confirmed that she’d been intending to meet with Vard that day. It was too much of a coincidence that one prominent temporal physicist had been targeted for retroassassination on the very day he was meeting another, so they’d investigated further. “Call up that unidentified trace we found in the hallway.”

  Dulmur did so. “This one?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Probable Vulcanoid, but with unexplained anomalies.” Dulmur looked at him. “You’re thinking evolutionary drift? But there were no temporal signatures around Naadri’s hotel.”

  “I’m thinking local talent.” He filled Dulmur in on what he’d just learned from Revad.

  When he was done, Dulmur whistled. “A modern version of the Cabal?”

  “Stands to reason. If the tactic worked once, why not reuse it?”

  “So the Cabal’s Sponsor tries to kill Vard and Naadri. Noi comes back, saves Vard and his students, so we get a temporal signature there.”

  Lucsly nodded. “She said she caught them. Maybe she did it just before they got to Naadri. All contemporary, so no travel signature.”

  Dulmur took it in slowly. “So are we back in the Cold War? Another front opening up here?”

  “Could be an isolated incident. Might not even be the Sponsor. Unrelated groups could use the same tactics.”

  “Still . . .”

  “Mm-hm.” Nothing more needed to be said. They would both be on their guard from now on.

  Yeshel Outpost, Axis of Time

  Late Piacenzian Age, Upper Pliocene Epoch

  Teresa Garcia walked alongside a being who was older than her own hominid genus. Councillor Damyz was showing her around his people’s facility, one of the oldest in the Axis in both senses: positioned over two-point-eight million years BCE, it had been one of the first stations erected within the Axis, over three centuries ago by internal time. Damyz himself had lived for over half that span. It certainly put her own regrets at being fifteen years out of time into perspective.

  “Indeed, ours is the earliest civilization currently participating in the Axis,” the stout Yeshel told her in a kindly, quavering voice, turning his tortoise-like orange-brown face up to hers. “There are a few, ah, interface zones connecting to earlier times, you see, but for whatever reason . . . for whatever reason, either nobody lives nearby or they have no . . . or at least no current interest in our affairs.”

  “Maybe they decided it was safer not to risk tampering with time,” Garcia suggested.

  “Maybe, maybe. But it’s their loss! We, we Yeshel and our neighbors—or contemporaries, if you will—we have benefited greatly. And . . . umm . . . ah, yes, this is the important bit, my dear: we have done so without, oh, what do you call it, eradicating anyone else from their later existence! Hah!”

  “But that’s because you have policies in place to prevent that, right? And if those policies were weakened . . . especially by someone with a self-serving agenda . . . then somebody could end up being eradicated after all.”

  “Well, maybe, maybe. If the, ah, parties involved did have such selfish motives.” He made a hissing exhalation that Garcia optimistically chose to interpret as a sigh rather than an involuntary metabolic function. “I admit, as the ones nearest the, ah, anchor end of things, my people are the least affected by such concerns. There is a certain risk of becoming . . . ohh . . . yes, complacent! Complacent about the concerns of our, well, successors.” He patted her shoulder. “Which is why I always remind myself, my dear, how important it is not to become that way. Ahh, complacent, that is.”

  She smiled. Though his hesitant speech had raised questions about his mental clarity at first, spending time with him had left no doubt that his mind was still strong, simply needing a little more time to get the job done than in his youth.

  “So what about the people who built the Axis?” she asked. “Any idea what happened to them?”

  “Only theories, young lady. Only theories. It seems to me, though, that they must have been extremely advanced to create such a thing. Perhaps they, ah, evolved to a, what do they call it, an incorporeal level shortly afterward and didn’t need the thing after all! Heh-heh!”

  “Well, can’t you just go back to the beginning and find them?”

  Damyz shrugged. “There’s no way out through the endpoints. Too much energy, too much, ah, spatial disruption.”

  “That’s strange,” Garcia said. “To create a passage into the future and give themselves no way into it.”

  “Maybe there is a way in,” Damyz suggested. “Just no way out. Perhaps they intended their journey to be one-way only. Oh, here, if you don’t mind, I need to sit for a moment.”

  They rested on a bench opposite a portal and stared for a while at the ring of light surrounding them, showing them the station they occupied from every direction except their own. “It troubles you,” Damyz said to Garcia. “Not knowing what happened to them.”

  “It does,” she said. “I just think . . . it’s important to remember the past. Not to lose its lessons. What happened anywhere in time, for better or worse . . . it shouldn’t be lost.”

  “Ahh, but everything is lost, eventually. At best, only remnants survive.” He gestured at the stars beyond the ring of light, the stars of his era. “Hm. Look at us. Out there, in the . . . well, what I consider the present, the Yeshel are a great civilization.” He rumbled. “Well . . . perhaps not as much as we were. But our legacy is known throughout the quadrant.” He raised his stubby arms into the air. “But you? You’ve never heard of us. Nobody here has ever heard of us . . .

  except through the Axis.”

  Damyz exhaled slowly. “All things are forgotten, my dear. Your civilization will one day share the same fate. So what . . . I ask you, what harm is there, really, in extending a bit of a lifeline from one age to another? Hm?”

  Garcia found she had no answer.

  Axis Hub Station

  Middle Calabrian Age, Lower Pleistocene

  “We’re getting nowhere, boss,” Garcia told Ranjea as they met once more with Pazlar and Krotine. “Damyz isn’t budging, and I think he wouldn’t even need Lirahn’s influence to feel that way.”

  “I agree,” the senior agent replied. “I’ve been able to make no headway with any of the other councillors, or with Sikran.” He took a breath. “I think we have to concede that there’s really not much we can do here. We were sent to negotiate with the Vomnin and the Axis Council, to make known our concerns about potential temporal disruption and attempt to find a mutually agreeable policy. Well, we now know that the Axis Council does currently have a set of reasonable safeguards in place.”

  “Safeguards that Lirahn is trying to undermine,” Melora Pazlar put in.

  “Evidently, but there is little we can do about it. It’s a matter of internal politics.”

  Garcia frowned. “Boss, Shiiem and Vikei didn’t go to all that trouble just to cry on our shoulders. They were asking for help.”

  “And so was Lirahn. While her methods are certainly ques
tionable, it doesn’t mean the essentials of her tale aren’t true. Both sides are claiming to be the victims, and we can’t know the real truth without more information.”

  “I don’t think Vikei was lying to us.”

  “I’m sure he was sincere, by his own lights. Truth can be multifaceted.” Ranjea paused. “Either way, it isn’t our job to swoop in and save the day. Our job is to uphold Federation law. And that includes the law that we don’t impose our will on foreign governments.”

  “But—”

  “Teresa.” She fell silent, waiting. “We can’t take sides here. We have done what we could to persuade the councillors not to revoke the trade limits. We have informed Sikran of our concerns that Lirahn may be trying to use the Vomnin for some end. But ultimately it isn’t our place to decide what happens here. It’s theirs.”

  “But what about the threat to the timeline?” Krotine asked. “That’s basically your whole thing, isn’t it?”

  “We’re here to assess that potential threat, yes. But there are limits to what we can accomplish if foreign governments are determined to follow different policies.

  “Besides . . . given the vast time spans involved, it is possible that any changes Lirahn might make in the past, for better or worse, would damp down to nothing by our time. And any truly lasting changes would be more likely to affect Vomnin history than our own. The Confederacy is aware of that risk, but they’re determined to proceed with this relationship anyway.”

  “Captain Riker won’t like the idea of just laying the problem in the Vomnin’s lap and flying away,” Pazlar said.

  “Yes, the captain’s reputation precedes him,” Ranjea replied. “And believe me, the prospect of leaving a threat to the timeline unresolved troubles me more profoundly than you can know. But we are here at the Vomnin’s indulgence. By their law, they have a territorial claim here. And if they insist that we leave . . . well, they have a lot more ships close at hand than we do.” He shrugged. “We may have to settle for doing the best we can and moving on to more tractable problems.”

  “Well, you do that if you think it’s best,” Pazlar said with a look of distaste. “But if it’s all the same to you, I suspect we’ll want to keep Titan around here for a while. You know, to explore the Axis and its cultures.”

  “You are more than welcome to remain,” Ranjea told her graciously, “and achieve whatever good you may. Just so long as you don’t leave the Axis in any past or future era,” he added, “or reveal too much about the future to anyone from the past.”

  “We know the Temporal Prime Directive,” she riposted. “Time travel’s caused us more than enough trouble already.”

  “Yeah,” Garcia said. “It has a way of doing that.”

  DTI Headquarters, Greenwich

  3 Rabī al-Thani 1814 AH (A Thursday)

  13:09 UTC

  “I feel like an impostor,” Dina Elfiki said. “The real me is out there living her—my life, and I’m stuck here watching from the outside.”

  Clare Raymond nodded understandingly. “For me, it was like I was a ghost,” she said, repeating the story she’d told fellow displacees many times. “Just a relic who’d lingered beyond my time, having no place in the world. Feelings of dissociation and alienation are common for displacees.”

  “But this is different. I really don’t belong. I can’t even leave this . . . gilded cage without risking a time paradox.” The Egyptian lieutenant glanced furtively at the entrance to her “guest suite” on the deepest, most secure level of the underground HQ complex—an entrance that both women knew had guards outside it at all times. “Not that they’d let me anyway.”

  “But look on the bright side,” Clare said. “In your case, it’s a temporary condition. In a few months, or whenever, you’ll be able to go back to your life again, and this will all just have been a strange interlude.” She felt a twinge of uncharitable, twentieth-century envy. Not only was Elfiki unfairly gorgeous and successful, but her temporal displacement was a walk in the park compared to Clare’s and many others’. But Clare quashed that sentiment; it was a relic of the smaller, shallower person she’d been in her old life.

  “Yeah, I hope so.” Elfiki fidgeted for a few moments. “In the meantime, do you know how frustrating it is to know, every day, what’s going to be on the news feed, and not be able to tell anyone about it?”

  “I can imagine how tempting it must be,” Clare said. She smiled. “I used to have dreams all the time about waking up back in the nineteen-nineties and telling people what the future would hold. Not to warn them about World War III or something like that, but just to show off. There’s something about having that edge, knowing something other people don’t, that makes you feel special. But it’s no fun if you can’t tell anyone.”

  “It’s more than that,” Dina told her. “Damn it, I’m a science officer! It’s my job, my instinct, to share information with people!”

  Clare tilted her blond head, divining that this wasn’t about fun. “Especially if it’s important, right?” Dina didn’t reply. “You’re upset that you can’t tell people about the event that sent you back here. Was it . . . something bad? Something dangerous? Something you think you should be allowed to prevent?”

  The lieutenant gave a heavy sigh, then rose to pace for a moment. “I wish that were it,” she confessed. “It’s not just that I’m not allowed to say what happened. I don’t really know exactly what happened myself. I came in on the middle of things.” She turned to face Clare again. “That’s one reason I came to the DTI. I’m hoping maybe I can learn something about what happened—what’s going to happen. Maybe if I watch events unfold, knowing where they end up, I’ll be able to piece something together. And this is the best place to be for finding out about anything temporal.”

  “But it must be hard to do research when you’re not allowed to reveal what it is you’re looking into.”

  “That’s the tricky part.” She shook her head. “Maybe I should tell someone. Maybe it’s something that should be changed, that needs to be changed. Maybe if I just confided in you, you could tell me how to proceed.”

  Clare held out her hands palms first. “Whoa there. I don’t know if that’s such a great idea.”

  “It would be in the strictest confidence, right?”

  “So is everything else you’ve told us. But this goes beyond confidence. You could tell us something that might cause someone to act subconsciously in a different way. There’s already a risk just for those of us who know you’re here at all.”

  Dina sank into her seat again and sighed. “Of course. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t even have brought it up.”

  “It’s perfectly understandable. Don’t worry about it.”

  In truth, Clare thought, she was probably the one who should apologize. The prospect of being given knowledge of the future, actionable knowledge that could potentially alter events for better or worse, had frightened her when Dina had offered it. She didn’t want to be saddled with that kind of responsibility, that kind of choice. She left the big-picture stuff to the agents. She was just a homemaker who’d found a new career holding the hands of fellow refugees in time.

  DOWNTIME

  STARDATE 45703.8 to 46008.2

  X

  Boomtime, Bureaucracy 38, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3534, Discordian Calendar A Saturday

  Indianapolis, North Am, Earth

  14:49 UTC

  Clare Raymond was sobbing to herself in the sonic shower when her great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter-in-law found her. Louise Cara Raymond was a big, spirited Latina with a generous heart, and she readily climbed into the cubicle and took her husband’s distant ancestor in her well-cushioned arms. “Bisabuela Clare, what’s wrong?”

  “This shower,” Clare sobbed. “I hate this stupid shower. I want a real shower, with water!” She knew how pathetic she must sound, but after struggling for nearly four years to get used to this life, she no longer cared. She’d hoped to at least get her crying done in private
, as usual, but this stupid so-called “sonic” shower didn’t even make enough noise to mask her sobs.

  “Well, why didn’t you just say so, sweetie? We can get you a water shower. It’s easy enough.”

  “No!” Clare pushed her away and climbed out of the cubicle. She put her hands in the sink to activate the faucet—at least that still had water, though no knobs or levers—and splashed her face to wash away the tears. “No, you don’t understand. I don’t want an indulgence. I want . . . I want a shower. A good old-fashioned shower that gets lime on the showerhead and mildew in the cracks between the tiles if you don’t clean it every day. God, how I hate mildew!”

  Louise stared at her, not understanding. Clare knew how shallow she must sound. Despite her matronly looks, Louise was a professor of exobiology at Indiana State, just like her husband, Clare’s direct descendant Thomas, who looked so uncannily like her dear, departed Donald. Their eleven-year-old, Mary, was already starting to study quantum gravity in school, and Darrell, who would be eight in December, already displayed computer programming skills that Clare would never comprehend. People in this century just made so much more of themselves than she ever could.

  Clare gathered herself while Louise wrapped a robe around her. Her body was bone-dry, but she appreciated the concession to her dignity. “The point is . . . at least back home I had something to do. Something that made me useful. It wasn’t much, but it was something.”

  “Don’t say that, bisabuela. You took care of your family. That’s everything.”

  “But now . . . the showers clean themselves, the floors clean themselves, the replicators handle food and clothes and garbage . . . what’s left for me?”

  “I know, I know.” It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, though it was the first time she’d embarrassed herself quite so much. “Clare, you know the kids love learning history from you.”

  “No. They indulge me. Half the time, they correct me. Tell me things I didn’t know about my own time.” At first, she’d thought Mary and Darrell were just confused because her era was so far in the past. But when she’d checked the databases, even when she’d studied news and historical accounts written in her own time, she’d been abashed to discover how narrow and insular her view of the late twentieth century had been. She’d never even heard of Khan Singh or Vasily Hunyadi, she’d been totally wrong about the motives behind the Tiananmen Square protests, and she’d thought the Shah of Iran was a benevolent leader rather than the brutal dictator he had been. And that wasn’t even mentioning all the earlier history she’d never learned, the history of Asia and Africa and the American Indians that had been totally ignored in her schooling, the great civilizations that had thrived in regions she’d assumed were primitive and wild. Sometimes it felt like Mary and Darrell only looked forward to her lectures so they could laugh at how quaint and ignorant her notions were. She knew they loved her, but love could be condescending.