Arc Riders

by David Drake

  Roebeck took her left hand deliberately away from the split keyboard. Her right index finger moved a spherical control with the caution of a bomb disposal expert. The display’s viewpoint approached the headquarters building as the sun slid toward and beneath the horizon.

  Following the banquet held in the central courtyard of the headquarters building, drinking had gone on to a late hour. Not all the dishes had been cleared. Rice and sauces lay spilled among overturned bottles.

  Half a dozen Vietnamese officers sat on the ground in a circle, singing and raising glasses to drink at intervals in the song. One of them faced outward. Several other Vietnamese sprawled on or beneath the tables.

  Three Caucasians with Military Assistance Command-Vietnam patches on their left shoulders walked carefully from the table. The man in the center was drunk and apparently singing quietly. He was dressed in ordinary jungle fatigues with the oakleaf collar tabs of a major or lieutenant colonel. The name tape over his left breast read JACKSON.

  The men supporting Jackson were not drunk. They wore tiger-stripe fatigues of the type issued to rangers and special forces. One of the men was in his forties; the other was short, intense, and no more than twenty-five years old.

  Carnes leaned forward when she saw the younger man’s face. She opened her mouth to speak, then swallowed the words.

  The men entered a room in the building’s left wing. The oldest closed the louvered door behind them. Roebeck eased a control forward, her eyes on the display.

  The viewpoint slid through the walls of stuccoed masonry, into a ten-by-twelve-foot room that served both as office and sleeping quarters. The apparent illumination level didn’t change, though neither the gooseneck desk lamp nor the bare bulb under a reflector in the ceiling were on.

  The young man lowered Jackson into a deck chair. It was constructed of polyethylene fabric and aluminum tubes stressed for the weight of Orientals rather than Caucasians.

  The older man set a pocket lamp on the floor. When he turned it on, it bounced an amazing volume of light from the back wall. The man opened one of a pair of matching cases and began setting up the apparatus within. He connected the two cases with a flat wire thin enough to be spider silk.

  “Twenty-third century mind control technology,” Weigand said with satisfaction. “As expected.”

  “And if either of them is Oriental,” Grainger said in a form of apology, “I’ll walk back to 50K.”

  The younger man bound Jackson to the chair with swaths of something sprayed from a dispenser. The material was so clear that it existed only as a reflection in the light.

  “They could be hirelings,” Chun said, accepting the apology. “Perhaps even locally recruited agents. Certainly the likelihood is that those who benefitted from the revision also caused it.”

  On the display, Jackson’s head lolled to the side. His eyes were closed.

  “I disagree,” said Barthuli calmly.

  The younger man stepped away from Jackson and looked toward his companion. The older man donned a helmet with an opaque faceshield, probably a display.

  Chun glanced at Barthuli. The analyst said, “Analyzing the potential effects of a revision requires computing power an order of magnitude greater than that necessary merely for time displacement. One can expect to affect a given area of events… but causing middle-and long-term results of a predetermined type is quite another thing.”

  The older man manipulated a control box. A small parabolic antenna mounted on a post from the open case pointed toward the sleeping advisor. The dish waggled minutely, then locked into position.

  “Same thing we were dealing with on the last mission,” Grainger said to Carnes. “Different flavor, is all. Hostiles in 1991—our 1991—were using a cruder version on the US National Security Advisor to keep him from making up his mind while the Soviet Union came apart.”

  “Of course it was really hard to tell with Scowcroft whether the mind control device was having any effect,” Weigand added, grinning slightly.

  “We know this one works,” Roebeck said softly as she continued to watch the process.

  “We’re not quite in phase with this timeline,” Grainger explained. Nothing visible was changing on the display, but if the team leader wanted to see it out, no one would gainsay her. “We’re close enough that we can induce images from lightwaves passing through the region we almost occupy.”

  Carnes nodded slowly. She stared at the display as intently as Roebeck did.

  “I can’t read the nametag,” she said. “The fellow against the wall. Can you—”

  Roebeck’s index finger didn’t seem to move, but the image closed to a head and torso view of the younger man. The tape on the tiger fatigues read WATNEY.

  “It may not be a real name,” Roebeck cautioned. “He certainly isn’t a real MACV advisor.”

  “It’s the name I knew him by in Son Tay when I was at the 96th,” Carnes said tightly. “He’s a recon specialist. He’s so much younger here that I wasn’t sure…. And he’s…”

  She turned to Grainger and said, “Could I have some more of that water, please? I’m—”

  Grainger fished a bottle from a rack concealed in the wall behind him.

  Carnes took the water, but she’d managed to swallow the catch of memory from her throat without it. “He’s been wounded at least a dozen times. When they brought him in in 1990, he was… I don’t know how he survived. Three abdominal wounds. It had been eighteen hours before the medevac bird reached him, let alone before they got him to us. But he always survives.”

  “That’s happened to him before and he goes back out?” Chun asked.

  “Oh, he’s crazy, of course,” Carnes said with a faint smile. She took a sip of water. “To function in the environment, you have to be. A war zone, I mean. Watney is… beyond the norm. He wants to die very badly, but he won’t, even when almost anybody else would’ve let go.”

  The ARC Riders looked at the face on the display. The features were of a chiseled regularity that was handsome beyond doubt, but not really attractive except on a statue. Watney’s mouth was unusually broad, though the lips themselves were thin. The face appeared calm; the pale blue eyes were windows onto a soul that blazed like the core of a reactor.

  “There’s one thing, though,” Carnes added. “The Watney I know wouldn’t be working for the Japanese. He hates Orientals more than almost anything else in the world.”

  She gave the others a lopsided smile. “He hates them almost as much as he hates himself.”

  North America

  Circa 50,000 BC

  Though the sun was bright in a clear sky, the snow was so dry that wind scudded veils of it over the drifts.

  “You know,” said Weigand in a voice that was several shades too calm, “I’ll be thankful when we make a few more trips back here and the settings precess into warm weather. I’d really like to lie back in the grass and let the clouds sail by.”

  “I can’t hop forward a few months,” Roebeck said. She was manipulating her controls and didn’t bother to look up. “At 50K, the minimum setting is a hundred years.”

  “Less a month or two,” Grainger joked. “Myself, I get nervous when the trees are closer together than the people are. It isn’t a situation we got familiar with on Sunrise Terrace.”

  He sobered. “I guess we’ve lost Dor,” he said in a flat voice. “We can’t go back to when it happened since we were there already. And when we fix the problem, that whole timeline won’t have happened. He’ll be gone with it.”

  “First we have to cure the problem,” Roebeck said as she worked. “Tim, why don’t you and Pauli set up a weather screen outside the hatch. We’re going to be here awhile before I’m comfortable with the settings. Some extra space will come in handy.”

  “I’ll take the other side,” Chun said. “If Pauli sets the fields, at least one of them is going to be repelling warm air right out into the blizzard—like last time.”

  She opened a locker set into the floor
of the vehicle. Grainger reached into the opening and began handing up what looked like bricks of gray putty.

  “Nan?” Weigand said. “Could I—we can’t displace the capsule, but maybe I could take a suit up the line? I’m really getting…”

  “Sure,” Roebeck said, though Carnes saw the team leader’s neck muscles stiffen. “Back in an hour, right?”

  “Right,” the blond man agreed with obvious relief. To Carnes—because she was a stranger—he said apologetically, “I’m not claustrophobic, you know, but being cooped up for too long…”

  “Can I come with you?” Carnes asked suddenly. If Weigand hadn’t brought her directly into the conversation, she wouldn’t have spoken.

  Roebeck’s expression went blank. Grainger raised an eyebrow in amusement.

  “Look, I’m here,” Carnes said as she rose to her feet. “If all I learn is how not to be in the way, that’s something.”

  Chun stepped into the hatchway, carrying a good dozen of the gray blocks. Grainger followed with a similar load. They’d pulled on gloves but otherwise wore only their tightfitting coveralls.

  Heating—and cooling, chances are—in the fabric itself, Carnes realized.

  Roebeck nodded. “Quo?” she said. “All right if she takes your suit? I think it’ll fit without major adjustment.”

  “Go ahead,” Chun said, turning her head. “It’d take hours to put together a suit from the spares, and then it wouldn’t fit.”

  “I’d like to go also, Nan,” Barthuli said.

  “I may need you later,” Roebeck said.

  “We’ll be here three days, wouldn’t you guess?” Barthuli said. “We’ll be back in an hour.”

  Carnes joined Weigand at the suit locker. He tilted up the faceshield of the suit Chun had worn, then opened the one-piece breastplate. The pivot point was along the left side; Carnes couldn’t see any sign of hinges even when the unit was fully open.

  “The first thing to remember,” Weigand said, “is that a displacement suit is a tool. The controls are extremely simple so that the suits can be used fast in an emergency. If you tell the suit to do something that will get you killed, the suit will do exactly what you told it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I do,” Carnes said. She met and held Weigand’s eyes until he nodded with a slight grin.

  Visible outside on the display, Grainger and Chun placed blocks about five feet apart on the drifts. The snow was so deep that the ARC Riders had to shuffle paths through it by main force.

  “The controls are on the left wrist,” Weigand said, lifting the arm to show Carnes the hemisphere and adjacent dimple on the underarm near the integral gauntlet. The displacement suit’s surface gleamed like enameled metal, but the limb bent as flexibly as cloth in Weigand’s hand. “Don’t touch them till we get outside and I tell you what to do.”

  “I understand,” Carnes said.

  “All right,” Weigand said. “Put the suit on. It’s easiest to do that if—”

  Carnes gripped the horizontal bar with her arms crossed. She lifted her thighs to her chest, twisted, and wriggled her feet into the lower portion of the suit.

  Weigand laughed. “Yes, that’s the easiest way for somebody your height, all right.” He flexed his long right leg, stepped into his suit, and used the bar to raise him enough to complete the job with the other leg.

  “Now,” he said, “I’m going to close the suit over you. Walk outside in front of me. Don’t do anything until I tell you to. We’ll talk normally on the laser intercom. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Carnes repeated. She kept her voice calm and low-pitched so that she sounded responsible. She remembered being taught to drive by her father, who, for all his faults, had never let her forget the potential lethality of the vehicle she was controlling.

  Weigand closed the breastplate, then the helmet, over her. The interior of the suit formed itself to Carnes’ body about as firmly as a blood-pressure cuff on the first pump. There was a vague feeling of constriction. Carnes realized that if the suit slipped as she moved, it would in short order chafe sores in her skin.

  The suit had no odor at all, neither human nor from chemicals in the construction. The air she breathed seemed cool, perhaps only because it was below blood temperature.

  “Now walk to the hatch,” Weigand directed. “I’ll cycle it for you; just walk forward.”

  Carnes’ view was as sharp as that of her ordinary vision. She knew she wasn’t seeing optically through transparent material only because her field of view was wider by a few degrees than that of her unaided eyes.

  She took a step and bumped the bulkhead with her shoulder. The suit weighed about ninety pounds, which wasn’t a problem because it was spread so evenly over her body. Its bulk would take a little getting used to, however.

  The bulkhead vanished a moment before Carnes would have walked into it. She saw the landscape outside the vehicle as if through a bubble of smoked glass. She stepped forward again, noticing the greater inertia of her suited limbs, and her foot came down in snow already disturbed by Chun and Grainger.

  “Come on up beyond the line of the generators,” Grainger said, beckoning. “It’ll be pretty sloppy out here by the time you get back. We’ll have melted the snow, but the area won’t have dried out.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Weigand said. “Just keep walking.”

  At the words, Carnes turned her head instinctively to look over her shoulder. To her surprise, she could do just that. The helmet didn’t move. Her head rotated without hindrance from the firm padding and her field of view slid sideways as well.

  “Tim and Quo are setting up a sorting field,” Weigand explained as they passed the line of gray blocks. “It’ll repel high-energy molecules on the inside and pass them in the other direction. We’ll heat the area and it’ll stay comfortable, despite the winter beyond.”

  Weigand’s suit no longer made him anonymous. His size was a giveaway, and the sheen of his right forearm differed from that of the remainder of the suit’s surface. The piece had had to be replaced in the recent past….

  They stopped in the lee of a drift from which poked thick stalks of milkweed. The open pods were now packed with snow. Barthuli was following them from the vehicle.

  “The suits’ default setting will displace them onto solid ground,” Weigand said. “If you displace to a horizon where the ground is flooded, you’ll be underwater. That’s not a major problem. If you displace into a glacier, that’s where you’ll be: in a block of ice, and no way to move to reset. Ice is less dense than flowing water. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand,” Carnes said, swallowing her impatience. Weigand’s plodding approach made her forget what she had just seen and lived through. She wondered if that was part of the ARC Rider’s intention.

  “Suits can’t displace geographically,” Weigand continued. “They can’t hover at the junction of now and becoming, the way transport capsules do, though they can be set completely out of phase for concealment. And they operate on a one-for-one duration with base time—that’s the time horizon from which you displace in the suit. If you go forward a year and stay a week, you return a week later than you left.”

  “I understand,” Carnes said. It struck her that the suit itself wasn’t simple: the controls were. The parameters of use were deliberately limited because it would be impossible to work within more sophisticated ones while wearing gear as confining as the suit was.

  “Most important,” the ARC Rider said, “it’s really easy with a suit to displace to a horizon where you’ve already been. You don’t have a capsule’s database to request confirmation. If you do that, you’re gone.”

  “I understand.”

  Chun and Grainger had gone back inside the vehicle. They’d laid their blocks in an ovoid, with the capsule’s hull forming a chord across the base of it. The snow within slumped as it warmed and compacted.

  “Now, I could carry you along simply by holding you in contact with my suit
,” Weigand said, “but we’re going to treat this as a training exercise. To prepare the suit for displacement, press the tit twice. Do that now.”

  Carnes deliberately thumbed the raised control. At the second touch, a pale orange mask overlaid the top half of her field of view. On the mask was the opaque legend 50K.

  “We’re going upline,” Weigand said. “The equipment won’t displace farther back than here anyway. To do that, you’ll put pressure on the top of the hollow spot. You’ll see the display shift. Try that now.”

  “Try 10,000 BC,” suggested Barthuli, who was also adjusting his suit controls. Presumably to Weigand—the suits were impassive, even though Carnes was beginning to recognize individual characteristics—the analyst explained, “There’s no European penetration, and we’re well clear of both ice sheets and any likely operational area. And I’ve never been there.”

  “One forest is a lot like another forest,” Weigand grumbled, but he added, “All right, Minus 10K. I just want a place that’s warm enough I can wiggle my toes in the dirt.”

  Carnes pressed the concavity as if it were a rocker switch. 50K vanished, leaving only the mask. She jerked her thumb away from the control.

  “No, keep going,” Weigand ordered sharply. “There’s a disjunction where the log scale changes.”

  Carnes obeyed. Numbers, initially in the high forties but descending, chased themselves across the orange field like the altimeter of a diving aircraft. On the landscape beyond the display, a thirty-inch depth of snow was melting into a pond. Water drained out along the path the three people in armor had tramped beyond the enclosure. The runoff froze as it gurgled down the track.

  When the display had scrolled to -11,000, Carnes relaxed her pressure on the control. Even so, she overshot to -9851 before she managed to raise her finger completely. Without asking Weigand, she pressed the opposite curve of the dimple. The numbers dropped to -10,066 in the first spurt. She brought the display home with a series of quick taps, each adding a year.

  “All right,” said Weigand. He must have been reading an echo of her display, because he didn’t ask whether she’d succeeded in the initial exercise. “Now change the scale by pressing the hand side of the hollow once.”