by Simon Hawke
"Bloody hell, "Mulvaney said, "that sounds like a bloomin’ Yank!"
Finn and Andre stood rooted to the spot, stunned.
"There are twenty rifles trained on you," the voice from the darkness said. "You’re more valuable to me alive than dead, but if you force my hand, I’ll take the loss."
Finn dropped his rifle. The others followed suit. Andre lowered her revolver. As it fell from her fingers, she stared at Finn and said,"It can’t be!"
The man walked forward into the firelight. He was dressed in Temporal Army base fatigues, but they were field gray instead of black, and the insignia were different, unlike any they had ever seen before. He wore a patch over one eye, and in his right hand, held a laser at his side.
"Lucas"" Andre said with disbelief.
"See to the wounded soldier," the man in the gray uniform said. Another man similarly dressed came into the light and crouched down over Ortheris. He removed a first-aid kit from his pack. Others now moved into the light, and they could see that there was only one other man dressed in gray fatigues. The others were all Pathan tribesmen.
"Lucas, it can’t be you!" said Andre. "We buried you! ‘,
"Did you" What a shame. I guess I’m late to my own funeral."
"Blimey! " said Mulvaney. " ‘E looks enough like the Father to be ‘is ruddy twin!"
"Finn"" said Andre, looking at him wildly.
"It isn’t Lucas," Finn said slowly. "At least not our Lucas. "
"Congratulations, Lieutenant. Or is it lieutenant" What is your actual rank""
"It’s lieutenant. Second Lieutenant Finn Delaney."
"And you"" he said to Andre.
"Sergeant Andre Cross," she said numbly.
"Sergeant"" said Mulvaney. "Would someone mind tellin’ me what in bloody ‘Ell is goin’ on ‘ere""
"It would only confuse you, soldier," said the twin. "I apologise about your friend. It was meant to be a warning shot, but these tribesmen tend to get a bit overzealous. Keeping them in cheek can be difficult. I strongly advise you to cooperate so as not to provide them with any excuse to give in to temptation. I believe you’re carrying dispatches. May I see them, please"",
"What dispatches"" said Mulvaney. "We were only escortin’- "
"Please, Private, don’t waste my time. The dispatches. "
"Do as he says, Mulvaney," Finn said.
"What manner of uniform is that"" Learoyd said as Mulvaney removed the dispatches from the saddlebags. "You’re not British, surely."
The twin Priest smiled. "It’s the uniform of a captain in the Special Operations Group of the United States Temporal Army."
"The United States"" Learoyd said. "I don’t understand. What’s your interest here""
"That," said the twin Priest, "would take a bit of explaining. And frankly, I don’t have the time. Let’s have those dispatches."
Mulvaney handed them over.
The twin Priest glanced through them quickly. "Yes, well, I’m afraid we can’t allow these to get through." He handed them to one of the other men. He glanced at Finn. " Interesting, " he said, "but not completely unex-pected. Paradox piled upon paradox. Zen physics run riot in the presence of a confluence. I assume from your reaction on seeing me that my counterpart was with your unit. Pity. I would have liked to have met him."
"What is he talking about"" said Learoyd.
"Not now, Chris," said Andre, the initial shock having passed."What are you going to do with us""
"Take you prisoner," said the twin Priest. "After all, I have as many questions to ask you as I’m sure you have to ask me."
"What about them"" Finn said, jerking his head toward the others.
"We’ll bring them along, just to ensure your cooperation. I wouldn’t expect commandos to be very cooperative by themselves, but with hostages, it might be different."
"Look "ere," said Mulvaney, striding forward belligerently. "I demand to know just what in bloomin’ blazes"-
The twin Priest signalled to one of his men. There were three sharp, hissing sounds and Mulvaney and Learoyd dropped to the ground. Din slowly backed away, eyes wide.
"You there!" the twin Priest said, pointing at Din. "Come here! "
Din froze, petrified with fear.
"They’re not dead," the twin Priest said. "They’ve just been put to sleep for a while. You have nothing to fear if you obey instructions."
Swallowing hard, Din came forward. The twin Priest looked at him hard. He spoke to Delaney. "This one’s not a soldier. He with you""
"He’s just a Hindu attendant we hired," said Andre. "He’s no danger to you."
The twin Priest looked at Din uncertainly for a moment. "Perhaps. I think we’ll bring him along, just the same."
He turned and spoke briefly in Pushtu to the Pathans, telling them that he was leaving one of his men in charge and that the British soldiers were to be brought to the temple unharmed or else there would be dire consequences. He then addressed the two commandos. "Your warp discs, if you don’t mind. Carefully. Don’t try anything or the others die."
Reluctantly Finn and Andre surrendered their warp discs. The twin Priest glanced at Din, who stood quaking.
"He doesn’t have one," said Andre. "I told you, he’s only a-"
"Search him," said the twin Priest.
After a thorough search yielded no warp disc, he was satisfied. "Right. Follow me."
They went off a short distance into the rocks, to a spot where three Afridis stood guard with one gray-uniformed soldier over a warp disc about the size of a dinner plate. It was large enough to generate a field that could transport a platoon of men at one time. They took up position around it, within its field radius, and the uniformed man activated it. The Afridis dropped to all fours, pressing their foreheads to the ground as the disc began to glow. A moment later they disappeared.
A thorough search had divested Phoenix of his weapons and his warp disc. He sat cross-legged on a small cushion in a room on the upper floor of the small palace. Two muscular, armed guards stood by the door behind him, tulwars held across their chests. Four guards flanked Drakov, two on either side. Under other circumstances Phoenix might have found the scene amusing, reminiscent of The Arabian Nights. Drakov reclined before him on an elevated, cushion-covered platform. They were surrounded by rich silks and tapestries. Incense made the air fragrant. Drakov smoked a water pipe, adding the pungent odor of latakia to the smell of burning incense.
Beautiful young girls with diamond nose studs, emerald and ruby ornaments in the centres of their foreheads, and bracelets of hammered gold and silver on their wrists and ankles, waited on them, gliding in and out of the room in their flowing, silky costumes, bringing them platefuls of fruit and sweetmeats. One dark-eyed young beauty lounged on a cushion by Drakov’s side, staring at Phoenix as Drakov absently fondled her breast. It was a fantastic scene, surreal except for the horrifying image of the guards plunging their knives into Fox and Sable.
"You’re not eating, Martingale," said Drakov in English, so that they could converse in privacy.
"Didyou expect me to have an appetite"" said Phoenix.
"After all we have been through together, I certainly did not expect you to be squeamish. Or sentimentally moralistic. I should have had you killed as well, but that would have left a lot of unanswered questions. Our meeting like this only serves to prove what I told you once before, that our destinies are linked. I gave you a position of power and responsibility. You betrayed me. I would like to hear your reasons. What did the Time Commandos have to offer you that I could not""
Phoenix snorted. "Sanity, for one thing."
Drakov’s eyes widened slightly. "You truly think I am insane" Could an insane man have accomplished what I have""
"It’s been done before," said Phoenix wryly. "I could name examples, but I don’t think you’d care for the comparisons. On the other hand, you might be flattered."
Drakov smiled. "You don’t understand. That much, at least, is clear. I suppos
e that was my mistake. As a leader, I should have motivated my men, imbued them with a sense of purpose. I failed with you. As you can see, I have not failed with these. "He swept his arm out to indicate the guards.
"What’s it all about, Nikolai"’ said Phoenix. "What are you trying to do here""
"Finish what I began," said Drakov. "More to the point, what the Timekeepers began and were never able to see through to the end. Before a new order can be established, the old one must be torn down, destroyed completely. That is the first principle of anarchism. As in the karmic cycle, death must come before rebirth. Only in this case the cycle has been interfered with. Mensinger’s warnings went unheeded, and what he feared most has finally come to pass."
"The alternate timeline," Phoenix said.
Drakov raised his eyebrows. "You surprise me. I am forever underestimating you. How much do you know" "
"Only that temporal interference has resulted in massive fluctuations in the timestream," Phoenix said, "bringing about a confluence between two separate timelines. Where do you fit in""
"I am an integral part of it," said Drakov. "I may even have helped bring it about. When your treachery caused my submarine base to be raided, I escaped along with Benedetto. We had a contingency plan. We had preset our coordinates to the 27th century, the last time period in which anyone would think to look for us. But fate had a surprise in store for us. Somehow we clocked forward into a different timeline, almost identical to this one, a virtual mirror image, only with some significant discrepancies. We did not realise this at first, which led us to make mistakes that resulted in our being apprehended. Their surprise was as great as ours. Both Benedetto and I were exhaustively debriefed. They wrung us dry to get information about this timeline, which they had been unaware of. What they learned from us explained a great deal about certain phenomena they were experiencing.
"They had a Mensinger as well," Drakov continued, "one very much like ours. Only they listened to him. They possessed the sanity to stop their Time Wars. But we have forced them to begin again by making war on them. "
"What are you talking about"" said Phoenix. "No one’s made-"
"What do you think happens when someone sets off a warp grenade"" said Drakov, "such as when Lucas Priest exploded one in 19th century Ruritania to break out of Zenda Castle""
Phoenix frowned. "What are you getting at""
"A peculiar temporal phenomenon occurs," said Drakov. "The chronocircuitry in a warp grenade, as I understand it, is designed to clock the surplus energy of the explosion through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge to the Orion Nebula, where it can do no harm. Correct" Eminently practical for military applications, one would think. You can focus the energy of a nuclear explosion with pinpoint precision while the major force of its destructive power is teleported elsewhere. Only such massive expenditures of energy are never totally predictable, especially when coupled with the delicate alignment of chronotransitions."
"Which means"" said Phoenix.
"It means, my friend, that this latest insane escalation of military weaponry has thrown off the chronophysical alignments of the bridges Einstein-Rosen Generators tap into. The people in the alternate timeline have been the unfortunate victims of this phenomenon. You have been waging nuclear war upon them."
"My God," said Phoenix. "That would mean. His voice trailed off.
"Thousands have been annihilated," Drakov said. "Hundreds of thousands. And they never knew the reason for the holocaust. They had no idea who was behind it. Until now."
Chapter 8
They clocked into a large, shadowy hall inside a dark, cavernous building. The atmosphere was dank and musty, with a feeling of great age. Massive stone columns supported a domed ceiling, and torches flickered in stone sconces. At the far end of the hall, atop a giant altar, was a huge obsidian statue of the goddess Kali, arms held out like an arachnid, skulls around her neck, tongue lolling. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floor.
"Whereare we"" said Finn.
"Inan old, deserted lamasery high above the Khyber Pass," said the twin Priest. "It used to be the temple of a thugee cult, which accounts for the statue and the grotesque carvings on the columns. It makes for a suitable base of operations. From below it’s virtually in-visible. An observer won’t even spot it with field glasses unless he knows what he’s looking for."
They saw a number of Pathan tribesmen standing guard and a few gray-uniformed soldiers moving about briskly, carrying equipment. They were taken to a small chamber, lit by portable lamps which generated their own power. There was a long table in the center of the room, with about a dozen chairs around it. Priest directed them to sit.
There were a number of soldiers in the room, all standing around the perimeter, watching them. A number of the faces looked unfamiliar, but Delaney spotted one he thought he knew.
" Bryant" " he said.
The officer looked back at him, deadpan.
"Bryant, but not B * ryant," Finn said.
The officer gave him a faint ghost of a smile.
"Martin,"said Andre, seeing another man.
The husky, bearded lieutenant gave her a brief nod.
"It’s amazing, — said Delaney. "A mirror-image universe."
"Not quite," said Priest. "But close." He walked up to Finn and pulled off his turban. "If you have a counterpart, I haven’t met him." He turned to Andre and yanked off her turban. Her long blonde hair cascaded down.
There was a strange look on his face. "Tell me about the other Lucas Priest," he said. "What was your rela-tionship to him""
"Wewere a team," she said. "The three of us. Lucas was my friend."
"For what it’s worth, I’m sorry he’s dead. How did it happen""
"He died saving a man’s life."
Priest nodded. "As good a way to go as any, I suppose. I wanted very much to meet him. I’d heard a great deal about you three."
"From whom"" Delaney said, frowning.
Priest smiled. "From a man named Drakov."
"Drakov!" saidDelaney.
"Nikolai Drakov arrived in our timeline escaping from you. Exactly how he managed to arrive is a complex question which we’ll save for the time being. He was unaware at first that he was not quite where he thought he was. As a result he made several mistakes which led to his arrest. Imagine his surprise, and ours, when we learned the truth. He was put through an exhaustive interrogation, the purpose of which was to learn as much about your timeline as we could. I use the term we generically. I was not personally involved. At least not at that point.
"The discovery of your timeline’s existence explained a great many things for us. It also raised a number of extremely difficult questions. For a number of years we had enjoyed uninterrupted peace. Our history, it seems, paralleled yours very closely. We had a Professor Mensinger as well, only he was considerably more successful than his counterpart in your timeline. He managed to prove to the Council of Nations that temporal warfare could interfere with history. Consequently, a ceasefire resolution was passed and temporal warfare was abandoned. The temporal armies were redirected toward space colonization, which I understand you have not pursued as extensively as we have. We found other means of settling our conflicts. Not perfect solutions, admittedly, but that need not concern you.
"Several years ago, by our Plus Time reckoning, we came under attack. A colony transport fleet was almost completely annihilated while en route to its destination with new settlers in coldsleep storage tanks. The few surviving ships could give no indication of why they were attacked, from where, or even by whom. Not long after that, the city of Altaira on the colony world New Queensland was destroyed. Reduced to slag. Again, no indication of who launched the attack nor from where it came. Other, similar attacks followed, apparently without rhyme or reason. Sometimes populated areas were destroyed, sometimes uninhabited moons or planetoids, sometimes the explosions occurred in space. Yet they all had the same things in common. No one could tell who was responsible. No one could tell where
the attacks came from. Each aitack was a nuclear strike. And we have now learned that each attack came from your timeline, through an artificially created warp in spacetime."
"Warp grenades," Delaney said in a low voice. "Sweet Jesus, what have we done""
"Killed thousands, millions of innocent people," Priest said. "And, until Nikolai Drakov fell into our hands, we had no idea who was responsible."
"How could we have known"" said Andre in a shocked voice.
Priest shrugged fatalistically. "Perhaps you couldn’t have. Your moral culpability, on purely ethical grounds, is certainly open to debate, but that’s neither here nor there. Suffice it to say that while it may be understood, in principle, that you didn’t realize what you were doing, a great many people don’t see it that way. If you had known, I have no doubt you would have stopped teleporting nuclear explosions through corridors in spacetime that bridged to our universe. But would that have been enough" What about all the lives that were lost" How could you possibly make reparations for them" Besides, the situation is considerabl, more complex than that.
"I was in retirement when I was reactivated. I thought I had seen an end of military service, but there was a need for personnel with my qualifications. The Special Operations Group was brought togethe. based on information obtained from Nikolai Drako. One of my main objectives on this mission was to lo~cate you. Not you specifically, but the temporal adjustment team we were certain would be sent back to this time period when a discontinuity became evident.
"You traced our warp discs somehow," said Delaney.
"Ittook a good deal of time," said Priest, "but that was to be expected. We weren’t sure when you would arrive or where you’d be."
And now that you’ve found us"" Andre said.
‘First, I need to establish to my satisfaction that you two are the only temporal soldiers in the group. You were the only ones carrying discs, but I need to be sure. This one," he approached Din, who sat wide-eyed, totally bewildered by it all, "is probably exactly what you say he is, unless he’s one hell of a damned good actor. The others I am equally disposed to believe are native to this time period. Scanning procedures will quickly establish that."