Storm at the Edge of Time

by Pamela F. Service

  It would be cool to the touch, she was sure, but not smooth. The sculptor had pitted the surface with little pocks and bumps. Halfway up the twisted shape was a metal projection that hooked out like a misshapen cup handle. If she were to put a hand around that, she’d feel the cool rough metal against the palm of her hand, against the inside of her fingers as they wrapped around it. She would tighten her grip and feel the roughness press into her skin. She would tense her arm muscles and tug. Again, harder, and again. The sculpture would start to rock a little, then sway. Back and forth, back and forth until the piece was too off center. It would tip over. The sculpture’s great weight would crash onto the floor, pointy parts gouging holes in the carpet.

  A rending crash caught her attention. There was the sculpture, actually toppled over on the floor. She just stared. Tyaak grabbed her arm and pulled her after him. The reception people had rushed from behind the desk and didn’t see three children slip through the forbidden door.

  Beyond the door was a hallway with small rounded rooms on either side. Cautiously they followed the hall to a larger room, where boxes were stacked on tables, and other tables had objects spread over them. Jamie glanced around but didn’t see the bone-white staff, and none of the tables was the right bluish gray. The others also shook their heads. They moved on.

  Voices, arguing voices, were coming from the next room. Quietly, the three slipped to the doorway and listened.

  “No, I don’t see how we can allow that,” a woman’s voice said. “The technology by which it was found is unimportant. We are talking about a Human artifact over five thousand years old; it belongs here, pure and simple.”

  The answering voice was high and musical. Tyaak whispered that it must belong to the Valgrindol. “There is nothing pure and simple about this, and the technology does very much matter in this case.”

  A third voice chimed in, dry and rough, “The inspector is correct here. It was a routine energy survey that revealed the artifact, not an archaeological excavation.

  “True,” the Human voice admitted, “but it was found in a major archaeological site that has never been thoroughly excavated, and it registers as contemporary with that site.”

  The lilting voice responded. “You forget, Director Johnston, that this is no ordinary Neolithic artifact we are discussing here. If it were, it would not be emitting the unidentified form of energy detected on the survey. It would not be defying all of our tests to determine the nature of that energy. If it were just a piece of five-thousand-year-old carved wood, we would gladly leave it on this planet for further study and display. But it is not.”

  Again the dry voice intervened. “Both of you have valid arguments, but really, Inspector, would it not be most appropriate for the initial study, at least, to be conducted here?”

  “I am surprised at you, Commissioner. Surely as a Kreeth you do not have enough faith in Human technology to trust these people with such an important find.”

  “I object,” Director Johnston interjected.

  “As do I,” the raspy Kreeth voice said. “In the years since contact, Human analytical technology has made considerable advances.”

  With a grunt the Valgrindol continued. “Since I out-rank you both and hold a Beta security mandate, your objections are of little consequence. The object’s archaeological importance is insignificant compared to what might be learned from studying the powerful energy it seems to be emitting. In light of the growing menace from those unexplained energy rifts in our neighboring sector, all new energy sources are of great security importance. So there must be no further delays. I will leave with the artifact tonight and take it to the science station on Tarka Four.”

  The Human’s voice was tight. “Very well. See to the artifact’s packing yourself. I want nothing further to do with this.”

  At the sound of approaching footsteps, the three eavesdroppers crouched behind tables, but the woman stomping by was clearly too angiy to notice much of anything.

  Cautiously Jamie and the others stood and listened some more.

  The trilling Valgrindol commented, “Your director certainly gets emotional, but that should be expected of Humans.”

  “It should be expected of any natives whose planet is losing control of an important artifact. I trust you will study it without destroying it.”

  “Yes, yes, Commissioner, of course. Now help me with the transport box. It’s over there.”

  As the voices receded, the three children peered around the door. It was a large round room full of tables and odd-looking instruments. Its two occupants were walking to the far end. The Kreeth had sky-blue hair cut in a reverse mohawk, the sides bristly with a bare strip mown down the center. The Valgrindol was thin, totally hairless, and a pallid green. Jamie couldn’t be certain if she was so repelled by the creature because it looked like a walking vegetable or because it might be one of the enemy, with its own reasons for wanting the staff. But other weird aliens hadn’t made her skin crawl.

  Without a word, she, Arni, and Tyaak crept into the room to crouch beside a blue-gray table. The staff was lying there, exactly as Jamie had seen it.

  Swiftly Tyaak reached out to grab it. But no sooner had his fingers touched the wood than the Valgrindol spun around. The face was as expressionless as a fish’s, but the voice was not.

  “So! I thought I felt some power here other than that staff. Let go of it!”

  “No!” Tyaak yelled as he dashed for the door. He’d only gone a few steps before the Valgrindol snapped its fingers. A bolt of energy shot from its hand and wound like a fuzzy electrical snake around the staff. Tyaak struggled, but in a burst of sparks the staff was torn from him and whipped across the room.

  “What was that?” the startled Kreeth demanded. “How did you—”

  “Never mind. Catch those three! They are spies, saboteurs!”

  But the three were already out the door. They ran through the other room, careened down the hall, and burst into the lobby. People—including the crew trying to raise the fallen sculpture—turned and stared.

  “Not the elevator!” Tyaak called. “They could trap us there. This way!” He pelted down a side hallway, but Arni was soon out ahead. The red-haired boy reached a door, struggled with the unfamiliar handle, then flung it open.

  “No, not that way!” Tyaak cried. “Over there!”

  But it was too late. Several groups were already closing in, some with weapons drawn.

  “On second thought …” Tyaak said, plunging out Arni’s door with the others right behind.

  As soon as she slammed the door behind her, Jamie knew this was a bad choice. Cold outside air. They were on a balcony, one of those they’d seen sloping down in short loops around the building. The air above was red with sunset—and the ground below was very far away.

  Dizzily hugging the side of the building, Jamie shuffled after the others, trying not to look toward the uncomfortably low rampart. She picked up speed as she heard the door behind her open and close.

  The sloping path rounded a corner and passed another door. Tyaak started to open it, but Arni had already run on. Shrugging, he hurried after the young Viking, with Jamie, feeling clammy and weak, sticking close behind. The path swung around another corner and dead-ended.

  Arni squealed, skidding to a halt against the low wall. “Never mind,” he said as the others nearly collided with him, “well use magic to turn invisible. If that doesn’t work, maybe it’ll help us fly.”

  Fly! Jamie thought as she slumped against the building’s side. No way. Invisibility would work. She’d make it work! Imagine she wasn’t here. She certainly didn’t want to be. No one was here. Just empty air. Rough walls scoured by the wind. Empty space blowing with sunset light. Cold and empty nothing.

  Footsteps and voices beyond the corner. A Kreeth peered around to their side, then turned back. “No, nothing there. They must have taken that other door. Go back.”

  Footsteps retreated; a distant door opened and closed. Silence. Jamie�
�s trembling knees gave out and she sank to the narrow walkway, her feet braced against the low rampart, pushing her as far from the edge as possible.

  No one said anything. The wind sang as it swirled around the odd shaped building. Far below in the distance, city gave way to shadow-smeared fields and darkened woods. Above, the sky flamed with red and purple, while along the horizon storm clouds piled into a dark wall.

  Jamie shivered at the reminder. Storms. They had failed. The third staff would not be added to the other two. Urkar would fight his long battle alone. And he would lose.

  “I always wanted to do something important,” she said dully. “But I didn’t expect to be the one who’d screw up and let the universe end.”

  Tyaak only nodded miserably, but Arni was looking thoughtful. “Tyaak, you mentioned ‘energy rifts’ and so did that grass-green guy. What are they? Are they part of Urkar’s storm?”

  “They are rips in the fabric of the universe, places where energy and matter get sucked in and vanish. But unlike black holes they spread, sometimes devouring whole suns. Usually they are isolated, but recently a number have been appearing and spreading in a nearby section of the galaxy.”

  Arni looked more confused than before, but asked no more questions. Tyaak ran his hand through his crest of hair, which was already beginning to go limp again. “It sounds crazy even to think of it, but energy rifts could be a manifestation of Urkar’s storm. This ‘magic’ of yours may be just another way of seeing and working in the same universe. The forces Urkar talks about are very like the destructive forces of an energy rift or the creative ones at the heart of a star. Perhaps the only difference is whether you call the laws that govern them ‘physics’ or ‘magic.’ ”

  Jamie nodded. “And in either case, this chunk of the universe is gradually going to be destroyed, and those creepy folks working for the other side are going to be in the driver’s seat until it is.”

  “Unless we can stop the storm,” Tyaak said thought&%.

  “But if we can’t get hold of the third staff…” Jamie began.

  Tyaak turned to her, looking grimly determined. “We have a goal. We failed to reach it one way, but there must be others.”

  “He’s got a plan!” Arni crowed.

  Tyaak laughed. “It hardly deserves such a grand name. It is more a chain of hunches. But first we must get back to the ship. They probably believe we have gotten away by now. Shall we try for real?”

  He and Arni walked briskly up the sloping ledge to the nearest door. Eyes averted from the edge, Jamie crawled up after them.

  They slipped through, and the door closed on the hollow emptiness outside, leaving them in an empty corridor. Jamie sagged against the solid wall, panting with relief. She couldn’t deny that she had magic. She’d always sensed she could see ghosts, and that one terrifying try with the glass had made her refuse to admit she could move things without touching them. But Arni’s suggestion of flying magically had never entered her wildest fantasies.

  She didn’t want to start with it now.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tyaak found stairs; and for ages, it seemed, they spiraled down them, sharpening their ability to tell when someone was coming. When they couldn’t dodge into hiding, they perfected the invisibility trick, thinking themselves into nothing but walls, floor, and empty space. Jamie was getting quite good at working with surface texture and angles of light.

  Once outside, they ignored the transport they had come in, in case it was being watched, and walked several blocks to catch another back to the spaceport. It wasn’t until they were locked in Tyaak’s ship again that Jamie relaxed. She was surprised at that, considering how alien it was, but compared to twenty-sixth-century London, it felt like home. Arni, for whom this part of the adventure had seemed close to fantasy, was clearly less shaken.

  “Got any more of those food sticks?” he asked. “That one was tasty but kind of small.”

  Tyaak went to a wall dispenser, produced several more and mechanically passed them around, his mind obviously elsewhere.

  “So what’s your plan?” Jamie asked as she bit gingerly into her pink food bar. “How are three kids going to snatch something that a bunch of scientists and a magic-working celery stalk are determined to take to another planet?”

  “Well, that Valgrindol is one of the enemy all right, and it is aware of us. So it will be difficult to get to the staff while it is on Earth. But once they leave for Tarka Four, the staff will go into a cargo hold while the Valgrindol stays in the passenger section. That will be our chance.”

  Jamie looked skeptical. “But that ship’s zooming off into space in a couple of hours. I’m sure Arni and I don’t have the right credentials to buy tickets, and anyway, once we’ve got our stolen property, how do we get back with it?”

  “Must you be so negative? We will not bother with tickets. When I was preparing to come to this planet, the ship’s computers were loaded with all standard Earth transportation data: spaceport coordinates, arrival and departure routes, and so forth. It is not difficult to calculate the route for a ship departing this port for Tarka Four. We will simply leave now and intercept them on the way.”

  “Oh right, with all weapons blazing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t your Valgrindol be traveling in a much larger ship with lots of firepower?”

  “Certainly, but we will not be relying on firepower. We will use its opposite.”

  “How?”

  Tyaak grinned. “What happened to your superstitious human ‘belief and ‘trust’?”

  “Oh, so it’s ‘Trust me,’ is it?” Jamie shrugged and got up to see if she could work the food dispenser herself. “Well, I suppose we’ve been asked to do a lot crazier things lately.”

  Working the controls, Tyaak asked for and received permission from the spaceport to take off; speedily he did so. Jamie, not too pleased with the food bar she’d gotten, returned to her seat and the screen.

  She watched London drop away beneath them, the older buildings lit at regularly spaced windows, the newer ones glowing all over like phosphorescent fungus. Then the city was just a patch of light in a dark island, an island surrounded by a darker sea, a sea spanning a dark planet.

  Suddenly Jamie realized what she was seeing, and trembled as if she had a fever. That was her planet she was leaving, her home. All she had wanted was to be a little special, to do something her perfect brother couldn’t—like maybe see ghosts. She hadn’t wanted to go skipping through time, to have powers that terrified as much as they excited her. And she definitely hadn’t wanted to leave her world on some space-piracy scheme that would probably mean she’d never see home again. She wondered if her ghost would end up haunting the spaceways some five hundred years after her time. At least if she met people who were looking for ghosts, she could warn them to forget the whole thing.

  Jamie was just lying back, trying to relax, when the lights dimmed, the view screens went dead, and the slight trembling of the ship in motion slowed and stopped.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked in alarm.

  Arni punched the lifeless viewscreen controls. “Did I break something?”

  “No, I did,” Tyaak replied. “At least I hope it will look like things are broken. The idea is to make this look like a ship in trouble. I have shut down all systems except for minimal life support; then I will damage some repairable reactor parts. When the Valgrindol’s ship comes near, I wall trigger a distress call. Space ethics require that the first ship in the vicinity of a vessel in distress stop and help. To save time, they will probably just bring us on board. Then we can steal the staff.”

  “Excellent!” Arni cried. “Those are Viking tactics!”

  “Just back up a second,” Jamie objected. “What if the first ship to come by isn’t the right one?”

  “It is almost sure to be. While still in a solar system, ships are required to keep strictly to regulation flight paths. Besides, we should be able to feel the staff when it comes close.”

>   Jamie wasn’t at all sure that would work in empty space but let it pass. What bothered her more was the next matter. “How do we get the staff once we’re on the ship? They’re not likely to give it to us as a souvenir.”

  Arni leaped up from his seat, waving his hand around as if it held a sword. “When Earl Thorfinn sailed away after the battle of Papey Stonsay, he had his men hide until the ship was in port. Then they jumped over the side and attacked Rogenvald’s town!”

  Tyaak smiled. “That is basically the idea. You two become invisible, and while I deal with the mechanic working on our ship, you find the staff and bring it back.”

  Jamie groaned. The number of things wrong with that plan was close to infinite. “But what if—”

  “We will just have to do the best we can—unless you have a better idea, of course.”

  Sure. Thousands of miles out in space, in a twenty-sixth-century alien spaceship, where she couldn’t even make the food dispenser work right. She shrugged. “No, go for it.”

  The cabin lights dimmed even further. “All right. No talking or noise now. I will set an alarm to alert us when a ship is approaching so I can trigger the distress call. Everyone just lie back and get some rest.”

  Rest, Jamie thought as she lay there tight as a spring. That word and “terror” just didn’t go together. She looked over at Arni and was surprised to see him asleep already. Maybe Vikings were used to sleeping before battle.

  On her other side, Tyaak seemed to be asleep as well. The bristles of his hair had calmed to a loose cascade. Suddenly she remembered where she’d seen hair that color before. Comic-book characters often had that same blue-black shade. For that matter, comics often did funky things with skin color too, though she hadn’t seen them use much avocado green. Now, if only the outcome of all this were as safe and sure as in a comic book. Well, at least imagining the perfect happy ending would give her something to think about while the others slept… .