Buying Time

by Robert Greenberger

  The Tellarite’s padd was already out, and he keyed it to transmit ten slips of latinum. “I’m looking for a deal.” The bartender’s eyes lit up at that and he leaned farther over the counter, balancing on his hands. Tev reached down and held the hands in place, at the wrist.

  “I’m looking for the answer to one question and these ten slips are yours. Prevaricate and you won’t be able to mix drinks for the next week.”

  The bartender’s eyes widened in fear and pain. He squirmed only a little before it became obvious Tev would prevail. He nodded once. Tev asked after Lant and got remarkably clear directions to the nearest branch of Frin’s Taverns. Pausing long enough to transmit the ten slips, Tev hurried out of the bar and moved south, gesturing for the others to keep up.

  As they moved down the street, he looked over at Corsi and smiled. “I tried it your way and found it remarkably effective.”

  “Thank you,” she said through gritted teeth. At that moment, Tev noted the temperature had dropped noticeably since the skies grew darker. His pace increased.

  Frin’s was a brighter, cheerier establishment, with people of all walks filling the tables and lined up along the U-shaped bar. A laughing Ferengi was juggling five shot glasses, two of which seemed to be filled. Tev once more left his companions outside and was ready with the bribe to keep looking for his quarry. The tricorder had been ineffective in pinpointing Lant’s signature, which proved vexing. Worse, Tev had to wait for the juggling bartender to finish his performance before being able to ask after Lant. He used the wait to scan the room, but no Ferengi was sitting by himself, so Lant was likely not here. He wondered just how far behind the time traveler he and the others were. An hour, half that?

  It took him fifteen slips this time, but Tev at least got a time frame along with the information. They were fortunate; they were maybe fifteen to twenty minutes behind Lant, who had headed into an older quarter of the capital city. As they neared the third establishment on their hunt, Tev felt the first drops of rain moments before the curses came from Sonya. “Tev, give me your tricorder.”

  “Is that wise out in the open?”

  “I don’t care. I want to find this man, now,” she said. He handed it over and she immediately began fine-tuning the signal. She tapped, waited, tapped again. Finally, with a grin, she handed it back to him.

  “He’s inside, waiting for you.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “I narrowed the focus, screening out where he was not likely to be and then fine-tuned for the node’s exact emissions—which only works in close proximity. Happy?”

  “Enlightened.” And he meant it. He had not been sure that Gomez was a worthy human to be serving under. He’d read her work, of course, and knew of her record, which was not of a certain accomplishment. Captain Scott had called her the best when he gave Tev the assignment, but Tev also knew that the captain was given to hyperbole, especially regarding human females. There was also the concern over whether or not the commander had recovered from her—to Tev’s mind, totally inappropriate—relationship with Tev’s own predecessor. However, she was starting to prove herself to be tolerably competent.

  “If that’s the case,” Corsi said, “I’ll circle around the back so he can’t elude us again. Carol will come with me.”

  Tev considered for a moment and then nodded in agreement. He waved them off and motioned for Gomez to wait by the side of the small, run-down building. It was caked with some form of grime and seemed to actually smell. Half the lights proclaiming its name and its products were broken and he heard them buzzing. He crossed the threshold and there was a different, albeit equally unpleasant, smell within. People were huddled around tables, the bar was empty and the voices were hushed, going silent as they took note of the Tellarite’s presence. As Tev’s eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he scanned for Lant and sure enough, at a table toward the rear a man was hunched over a tall glass of something green fizzing and he was fumbling with something in his hands. He was the only one not looking at him. Cautiously, Tev stepped farther within the establishment and rummaged in his bag for a hand phaser.

  The man seemed oblivious to Tev’s approach, and the bartender remained silent. Others huddled down farther in their seats, drinking in silence, which made his footsteps seem amplified. His fingers gripped the phaser, and he tried to keep it out of sight. Finally, as he was ten feet from the table, Lant looked up and grinned stupidly. It was a mix of triumph and terror, telling Tev he wasn’t being as careful as he had hoped. Lant stabbed at a control, and the node between his hands glowed with a shower of red, pink, and orange sparks. Tev threw himself at him, but landed atop the empty table, bruising his ribs for his trouble. He let out a Tellarite curse and snarled a little before getting up and checking his phaser. It was undamaged, so he stuffed it into the bag in favor of his tricorder and one of the nodes. Quickly, he rushed out the door and thrust both at Gomez.

  “He’s escaped in time. We have to find him.”

  Chapter

  6

  On the da Vinci ten years in the future, Dantas Falcão was finishing her meal in the mess hall when Bart Faulwell sat beside her. He carried with him a leather portfolio and a small satchel that he spread out on the table. She watched in fascination as he pulled out a sheet of parchment paper and an elegant pen. Setting it down, he rose and went to the replicator, returning a minute later with a plate of cookies and a mug with steam rising from the top.

  “We haven’t met,” he began, a broad smile on his face. “I’m Bart Faulwell. You’re Dantas Falcão, the new medtech. So tell me, how are you enjoying the ship?”

  “How’d you know who I am?” she asked with some confusion in her voice.

  Faulwell just grinned and returned to his letter.

  Dantas frowned for a moment and then glanced at the letter he was writing. “Wow, I haven’t seen pen and parchment in a long time.”

  “Well, they say the old tools are usually the best tools,” he said.

  “Which they?”

  Now Faulwell frowned at the simple question and took the opportunity to bite into a cookie. He finally shrugged and replied, “There’s always a ‘they,’ I’ve been told.”

  “Who told you?”

  He stared at her in surprise and then said, “You’re messing with my head, aren’t you?”

  Dantas grinned at him and swiped a cookie from his plate, took a bite and chewed happily. Bart looked at her, his pen, the plate, and finally back at her.

  “So, there’s always a ‘they’ and someone’s always telling you things. How long has this been going on?”

  “What?”

  “These voices? What does Dr. Lense say about it?”

  “There are no voices,” he said.

  “Then who tells you these things?”

  “What things?”

  “Things like old tools being the best tools. You ask me, I’d prefer our computer interface to pen and ink.”

  Bart broke into a grin. “Ah, now there you’re wrong! Ever since pen and ink and parchment came together on Earth, nothing has replaced it. Having something to hold, and keep, in someone’s own hand is far more personal, and if I might say, romantic, than a voice on an isolinear chip. What do you find romantic?”

  She paused, stopping a reply from being uttered. Clearly, she had thoughts on the issue, he noted, but he was willing to have her think this one through. He sipped from his mug and wrote out a few more words while she pondered.

  “To me,” she began slowly, “romantic acts are more spontaneous. A sudden present, a surprise for dinner, running away from home and going for a picnic. I guess my kind of partner acts more from instinct than careful planning.”

  “Well, I guess it’s a good thing I’m taken,” he said with a grin. She blinked at him in surprise.

  * * *

  Down on the asteroid, P8 Blue was shuttling back and forth between consoles, checking readings and tentatively triggering controls. Soloman knew she was increasingly c
oncerned over the imbalance that was building on the schedule she charted hours earlier. There was less than eight hours to go before things grew critical and the asteroid was likely to explode.

  “Soloman,” Pattie called out. It was the first time she spoke in quite a while. “This new set of readouts makes me think things might implode instead. Something changed in the intermix.” She scuttled up the computer a bit to better read one of the displays, and she seemed to be rechecking her work. The Bynar waited patiently even though he began to feel the sense of impending danger, a feeling he had grown accustomed to, but was never happy about it.

  “The batteries are all drained and the computer is still active, so it’s increasing its draw from the asteroid; that’s what’s making things change,” she called out. “In fact, because of the constant drain, the asteroid is becoming less and less stable. Its increasing brittleness may cause the implosion.”

  “This is not a good thing,” Soloman said, trying to keep things light. He had noted that his S.C.E. colleagues had been having more trouble doing so since Galvan VI, so he felt the need to increase his own efforts—especially in light of his own ostracism from mainstream Bynar society, underlined by the prejudice of the Bynar pair on the Ishtar project.

  Time felt slow to him, which was odd given the countdown that continued inexorably downward. P8 Blue previously theorized the metallurgy employed by the race that constructed the chamber was uninspired, just a slightly different blend of ores than standard Federation construction.

  “Pattie,” Soloman called out. She turned toward him, lowering her tricorder. “I wanted to ask you about your visit home.”

  P8 Blue closed the tricorder and returned to the floor, obviously collecting her thoughts. While colleagues, the two were not close and he feared he was being inappropriate with the question.

  “It was not what I had hoped for,” she finally said, her voice sounding small. “My time in Starfleet has opened up my eyes and my mind, and suddenly my people seem a troubled lot.”

  “As I understand it, your opinion was discounted until it was almost too late.”

  “That it was,” she agreed, coming closer. “The Citoac was believed a myth until physical evidence proved otherwise and my people had to adjust accordingly. They had forgotten their promises and needed to learn a painful lesson.”

  “Would you go home again?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Now it was Soloman who grew silent. How could he explain what it was like, recently working with paired Bynar who then rejected him as aberrant? The pain of losing 111 was fresh again, and, coupled with the rejection on Venus, he seemed to dwell on his fate with increasing regularity.

  “I am not sure I am welcome on my homeworld anymore,” he finally said.

  Pattie’s expression changed to one of total sympathy. “Oh, Soloman, that can’t be true.”

  “It might be, I don’t honestly know. Unpaired Bynar are seen as unfit for society, and the bigotry I experienced on Venus makes me unsure about ever returning home.”

  “Do you regret the life you chose?”

  “No, I do not,” he said with conviction. “What I traded away in functionality I have more than made up for in life experience. It’s just that I do not know if I would be welcome by the society at large.”

  “You and I, I think, are explorers and pioneers in our own ways. Our lives apart from our societies allow us to bring much-needed perspectives to the homeworlds. I had hoped that after the Dominion War our people would see a need for reexamining our place in the galaxy, but the conversation has not even started. However, there are more Bynar on Federation worlds and, I truly believe your people will come around once presented with the overwhelming evidence that there’s more than one approach to life.”

  Soloman considered her words, taking comfort in them and in P8 Blue’s willingness to open up. He had hesitated in even starting the conversation but needed to help crystallize his thinking. Before he could continue that thought, a flash of bright light caught his eye.

  “There’s been movement,” Soloman called out. Pattie quickly moved to the main console and watched over his slight shoulder. He gestured at a small display on the right that seemed to pulse. “Lant’s temporal node has advanced three years, two months, and eight days in the subjective future.”

  “You mean he’s only seven years behind us now?”

  “Exactly,” he answered. “This is his first time in that period, if I read these screens properly.”

  “And that says he’s still on Ferenginar?” She pointed to the adjacent screen that did not flicker, pulse, or change.

  “It appears that way. But why would he do that?”

  “A new market? Checking his bank account? He has a hot date? How should I know?”

  His reply was interrupted by an alarm from Pattie’s tricorder. She quickly looked at it and then craned her neck toward the fuel consumption monitor. Her look darkened and her soul shrank.

  “The time jump changed the rate of decay, the imbalance has grown exponentially,” she reported. “That’s why the batteries ran dry before.”

  “But we still need to retrieve him,” Soloman said, fingers tripping over themselves as he reprogrammed the command center. “It appears that I can send these new coordinates to the temporal nodes used by the away team and they can follow.”

  “And if they do that,” she said slowly. “The rate will change again.”

  “How much time will we have left if the four pursue him?”

  Pattie paused, doing mental arithmetic and entering other numbers in the tricorder. Slowly, she looked up at the Bynar, her expression pained. “Maybe an hour, and far less when all five come back here.” She made one of the odd chimelike noises that characterized her species. “So much for the margin of error.”

  “It never lasts. You had better brief the captain,” Soloman finally said. “I’ll relay the coordinates.”

  * * *

  In the past, Gomez was working with her node and the tricorder, attempting to lock on to the chroniton trail left by Lant’s sudden absence as Tev paced back and forth. Abramowitz and Corsi huddled together for whatever warmth was possible as the light rain continued to fall, making the streets slick. She had to give the Ferengi credit for designing one of the best drainage systems she’d ever encountered.

  Tev rubbed his sore ribs and seemed agitated, but she couldn’t indulge his bruised ego for the moment. Now that the need for disguises was over, she resumed her command persona and concentrated first on the mission. Lant’s node didn’t transmit coordinates she could trace, but she had hoped to once more lock on to the particle signature and figure out where—or when—he went. She grew frustrated at the lack of success but refused to let on to her team.

  A beeping sound caused everyone to turn around and stare at Gomez. She was studying her node carefully and then grabbed for the bag by her feet. Carefully, she removed the other nodes and the beeping sound increased in volume. Carol came over to watch and was given a node; another went to Corsi, and a third node went to Tev. All studied it while she concentrated on her node and the tricorder.

  “Interesting,” she said. “We’ve received entirely new coordinates. These things must be linked at all times to the asteroid’s machines. Okay, we’re back on the trail.”

  “What makes you think they can be trusted?” Tev asked.

  “I’m willing to bet that these came from Pattie and Soloman. Yes, there’s a chance these are from Lant and we’ll end up in the middle of a prison riot, but I’m willing to take the chance.”

  “We stay or we go—those are the options, right?”

  “Yes, Domenica.”

  “Then let’s go,” she said.

  Sonya saw that Carol also nodded in agreement, which emboldened her. “Tev, Domenica, phasers out. Carol, you handle the baggage. On my mark, we jump to the future.”

  “How far forward?” Abramowitz asked, shouldering the bag.

  “It looks like a little
over three years,” she answered. “I can’t imagine he’s doing this for any reason other than escape. He probably doesn’t know half as much about how these things work as we do.”

  “But we really don’t know that much about them, do we?”

  “Actually, Carol, if we pooled our knowledge, the answer is yes. But if it were just you or Lant, I’d say things were pretty even.”

  Abramowitz made a face, which caused Gomez to smile for the first time in hours.

  “Ready. Mark.” Her right thumb triggered her node and the light show began again as her eyes shut. There was enough noise surrounding her that she suspected all four nodes were in use. Funny, she thought, the lights didn’t generate any heat, nor could she feel them on her damp skin. And yet, they were bending the rules of physics and letting her slip through the years. It was enough to make her head hurt, which was one reason she tried to avoid temporal physics.

  The blinking from the bright light stopped peppering through her eyelids and Gomez risked opening one eye. They stood on the same street as they had before, but it seemed even dirtier, if that was possible. The rain was harder than before and was even colder. Passersby who saw the light show begin were running away, some squealing in shock. Maybe a siren was going off in the distance, but Gomez couldn’t tell. Both eyes open, she was pleased to note all four of them arrived together. Better yet, Lant was only a block or two ahead of them, running for all he was worth.

  “Corsi, go!”

  The security officer didn’t need to be told twice and she was off like a beam of light. Her longer legs and grim determination allowed her to quickly close the distance. The engineer admired how the security chief managed to stay upright despite moving quickly, bare feet slapping on rain-slick streets. It wasn’t even much of a race, and Lant was too busy running to even consider using the node to jump through time once more. With just a few feet between them, Corsi reached up and pulled the spanner from out of her hair. In one fluid motion, it came free and went flying directly between Lant’s legs, tripping him. He went sprawling and then skidding on the wet street, making for a comical sight. No one, especially Gomez, felt like laughing.