I am not an expert in the science of dreams, but are they not a random accessing of long-term memory? This would seem to mean that if this were a dream, you would be correct in your assessment of your inability to imagine that which you have never seen.
Emily blinked at that, not sure how to respond. Of course the dream voice in her head would say this isn’t a dream, but the logic made her head hurt, even factoring in dream logic standards. Though as soon as the hurt manifested, it eased, as if from a touch…
The group reassembled close to the doors, with biker guy taking a sentry-like position there and green-not-giant keeping an eye on the anomaly. The rest of the motley crew eased onto crates they must have previously tested for soundness because Emily wouldn’t have plopped down on any of them based on how they looked.
Robert paced back and forth in front of them, towing Emily with him. She didn’t mind the constant contact. It kept her grounded as she grappled with maintaining denial—no, not denial. Denial would involve denying reality. This could not be real.
“You said we—my friend and I—must be pins.” He stopped, studying each one. “Someone who pins time. That’s what you’re talking about isn’t it? That’s what you are.”
Emily felt oddly relieved that Robert hadn’t told them her name, though she had no clue why.
It is always better to get information than give it, Nod reminded her.
Right. I’ll try to get it into long-term memory. It might be worth taking with her when she woke up if she managed it. Didn’t have a lot of success remembering her dreams.
Green-not-giant looked surprised and wary made a comeback. “What else would we mean?”
Emily felt like someone had stuck a pin in her eye, but as soon as the pain spiked, it eased again, as if someone—or something—soothed it.
Not-Colonial appeared thoughtful. He nodded. “We were all in transit to time assignments when we and our escorts were trapped. All nanites were extinguished and our escorts rendered unconscious. None of us has seen the trackers since. A few of the other pins, captured by the ’tons, have been released with the scars you observed on the two men we left in the airship.”
That was a bit of an info dump. Not sure if it was better to get that kind of information.
“And when we do see them, they are not themselves,” Purple-not-people eater amended. “They look through us.”
“That’s why we check necks after we’ve been apart.” Not-Colonial finished.
Apparently the looking through them wasn’t clue enough for the motley crew. Maybe her dream had used up all its good stuff on Robert.
“Does everyone but you have them?”
Not-Colonial hesitated. “There are some who don’t look around, but don’t appear as blank as those with scars. The deeply poor often have no reason to look up or question. We have wondered if they came with the alternate reality, while the rest of us have been added.”
Emily had read alternate reality books in her quest for steampunk fiction, but this—she shook off the thought, not eager to follow it anywhere.
Robert nodded, resumed pacing with an abruptness that caused Emily to stumble before she matched his stride. They all, Emily noticed, watched him like he must have all the answers to all the questions. She didn’t blame them, since she felt the same way. He stopped again. Emily bumped into his back. Emily didn’t mind the spurt of warmth, maybe with a little lust mixed in there. She stayed there, snugged against his back, letting warmth seep into the marrow of her bones. It was almost as good as getting kissed. This place should suck too much for kissing thoughts, but somehow she managed to go there. Too bad they had the crazy quintet with them. She could use the distraction of some toe curling kisses. Seemed like a girl should get kissed when she wanted to in her own dream. So she shouldn’t care about their audience, but somehow did.
Biker guy glanced at Emily, a slight frown forming between his brows, as his gaze traveled up, then down. His expression softened some. “Where are you from?”
“Not from any place or time like this,” Robert spoke for them both, his tone going from absent to belligerent in less than a second.
Point eight tenths of a second, Nod put in, sounding a bit puffed, too.
“You are not Garradian.” This from the un-Belle, her gaze did a tracking thing to Robert. “But you could be.”
He is pretty, Nod conceded, still sounding puffed.
So I guess I just got insulted. Emily smiled, though it didn’t feel friendly. Too much baring of teeth for friendly.
“No. I did experiment with vegetarianism for, like, a day,” Emily pretended she thought the question had been meant for her, “well, maybe less than a day, but I had to give it up because I’m basically a carnivore.” That silenced not-Belle, which Emily didn’t mind at all, because the wench shouldn’t be casting languishing glances at Robert-oh-my-darling. Emily mentally winced. Now Nod had her doing it. This had to stop before she said it out loud.
The wench gave a pissy smile and then smoothed it into a come hither one for Robert oh—Emily managed to shut it off as she felt an almost territorial shift inside. With the shift came something more than a desire to yank the hair the witch couldn’t smooth without about three showers. In a little moving picture inside her head, Emily saw how to send the not-belle ninja sailing, a bit like she did the guy in the airship. That was kind of cool. She was jealous, she understood that, but it was her dream, so the wench better rein in the languishing looks. She edged in closer to Robert, who accommodated her by sliding his arm around her waist. Emily sent a look half triumph, half warning toward the not-belle. The witch pretended not to care, but she shifted uneasily all the same. Emily had an odd urge to say, “Hoo yah,” but managed to quell it.
“Are you all Garradians?”
Purple-not-people-eater and Green-not-giant looked offended.
“We are members of the Time Alliance.” Green-not-giant snapped.
“I am a Grenardian, not a Garradian.” More purple suffused Purple-not-people-eater’s face.
If that wasn’t a sign that nothing good ever came from a question, she didn’t know what was.
“Right.” Robert sounded a bit winded, which wasn’t a surprise.
The earth moved again and the anomaly moved closer.
“I hope that doesn’t eat our airship,” Emily said, trying to mentally place it relative to this place and not succeeding.
“Our airship?” Robert looked amused.
“We took it. It’s ours. We should get it airborne before there’s any more shrinkage.” She had no idea how long it would take to get the steam built up again.
“An airship?” Not-Belle sounded uneasy.
“It’s better than wandering around down here with automatons clunking after us.” Really, she shouldn’t have to point out the obvious, even if they were dreamtime creeps.
“We do need to find other shelter,” Green-not-giant tossed in. “This one will be gone soon. We won’t last long out there.”
Not-Colonial frowned. “Will it rise with all of us inside? Usually they only carry an engineer and a pilot.”
Robert looked at Emily, which was, awesome. She nodded. With the Abram’s ball, shouldn’t be a problem. She almost frowned. She’d had dreams where she thought she could fly until the moment she needed to fly.
“We don’t have a pilot,” not-Colonial pointed out. “Unless—” He looked at Robert, then Emily.
“I can fly it,” Purple-not-people-eater said.
Everyone looked at him with varying levels of belief.
“I can.”
Only one way to find out if he was right.
“Aerial recon would be useful. Get the lay of the land.” Maybe they could find Uncle’s E’s warehouse, too.
Green-not-Giant perked up, in a very green way. “Perhaps there is a way out up there.”
They all looked hopeful at that thought.
“Recon is always good.”
Looking into Robert’s eyes, Emil
y had the weird feeling that he was thinking about a hundred things at once.
More like a million. Robert-oh-my-darling has a unique physiology well suited to nanite/human integration.
Emily thought about that. You like his brain?
Oh my darling yes. A pause. Your brain is very interesting, too.
I’m sure it is. Not.
There is much here that Robert-oh-my-darling would find interesting and useful if we could continue the data transfer.
So her brain was “useful” to Robert. Lovely.
Not just to Robert. We were most curious why your physiological response was similar to Robert-oh-my-darling, but different. But that’s not why I migrated into you. I had to do it stabilize you in the time vortexes we passed through.
Okay, that was interesting and embarrassing, though if kissing would help…
How self-serving could she be, trying to manipulate an innocent, imaginary voice in her head into asking her to kiss Robert.
Do I make you uncomfortable? Do you wish me to evacuate?
No, of course not. It was true. She kind of liked having Nod there. I just want to help you—actually don’t trust me. I just want to kiss Robert again before I wake up. He’s such a great kisser. Like seriously awesome. If kisses are smart, then his are totally brainy and hot. Oh wow. I’m that shallow.
The chuckle felt like being tickled from the inside. You are deeper than you realize, Emily.
My friends call me Em.
The sigh felt different from the chuckle, but also inside out. Like a puff of warm air against her insides. It felt so real. So did Robert’s arm around her waist. Had her dreams felt this real ever? Had the heat been this hot, the rotten smells this rotten? The motley crew couldn’t be real, but there was something about them that felt almost authentic, despite their motley strangeness or perhaps because of it. The ground shook again, the anomaly eating more of the warehouse, a crate not crunching when half of it disappeared. The inexorable silence of it sent a chill that felt very chilly—and very real—down her back.
She shivered, leaning harder against the warmth that was Robert. He breathed in and then out. She matched the move, only opposite, inhaling—with gratitude—his guy smell, just under the sewer scent.
All of it, sights, sounds, smells, the feel of Robert strong and sturdy next to her, combined into a moment of blinding, terrifying, amazing truth.
“I’m not dreaming.” It wasn’t a question, at least not technically, but Robert shook his head.
“No.”
“Holy crap on a cracker.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“If you’ll take my advice,” Chameleon sounded like she thought Ashe wouldn’t, “you won’t tell him your full name. In his culture an exchange of names is an engagement or maybe marriage. We’re not sure.”
“We are not allowed to reveal our names.” Ashe knew she sounded prim, and she stood on shaky ground. If she managed not to reveal her name, it might be the only regulation she didn’t break in this place. Chameleon’s arched brows and the mockery in her eyes said she knew it, too. Up to now, events had unfolded too fast for Ashe to do more than react. Act, not react was another family stricture and she felt a need to change the dynamics sooner, rather than later—though both sooner and later were tricky to define on a Time Service operation. She stopped the thought there, so as not to start a round of eye twitching or a time spiral.
Lurch tried to help her organize the incoming data, but she needed to think, to try and get some perspective on what they’d learned. Back before the “drill” she’d felt an urgent need to move, to act, now she felt as much urgency to stop and consider. It helped to be outside in real air after so much time in the stream, though it felt odd to be on the outpost when it wasn’t the base. It looked almost the same, but it wasn’t. Unlike the base, or her brief time in the time tear, this outpost teemed with activity. Garradians—no—Gadi and Earthlings passed by in almost equal numbers. Unification was in the “later” column in this time. It felt a bit like being in one of those historically based Earth vids.
Time looked different here, too. She didn’t just see it surging through this place in new and interesting patterns. She felt it, too, felt its persistent, eager progress. Time didn’t stop on the base, at least not in the section she worked out of, but it did proceed at a reduced pace and the patterns were more sedate when the inhabitants had fewer choices to make and the time shields and sensors filtered out much of the stream. Ashe didn’t like extended time on the base. As a time sensitive, slow time itched, despite her protective uniform. Even those not as sensitive to time as she was got twitchy if they lingered in slow time for too long.
Here in real time, it looked to be mid-day, well into the hot season, judging by air thick enough to swim through. Even the Chameleon looked hot, an interesting feat for someone so fundamentally cold. The humidity wasn’t a surprise, since the outpost had always been surrounded by a large body of water and was in a temperate climate zone on Kikk. What did surprise was how little it had changed in the passing of so many seasons, so many Earth years.
Lurch had a time stamp from spiking into the outpost’s systems, but it was little help when time continued to flex and flux out in the stream. The food and visit to the loo had helped recharge her physical systems, but mentally she lagged like bad time. Neither the Chameleon nor her man seemed inclined to talk, allowing her to consider the bits of data drifting through her head in disconnected pieces. He’d downloaded protected historical data for her to compare against this reality. It didn’t always help as much as it should, since humans recorded their own history. Ashe looked around as they walked, trying to do it without tourist-like gawking, though that was a challenge. There had been a period in their history where tourists had toured time. No surprise that didn’t work out, but she could see the appeal. This place, these people had helped shape her future—if she still had one when the time dust settled.
When Ashe mentioned that someone in the Council might be involved, Lurch had wanted her to show Chameleon their faces—up until the paradox tremors ramped up like a furious panthric. It had been worse than meeting her ancestors and Lurch backed off in a hurry. So no sharing—or possible insights—there. It heightened her sense of isolation from Service resources. Just because she could navigate the stream like a pro didn’t mean she could repair time like one. She felt another round of regret for her inability to pause time.
It might not be possible to pause time when it is so unstable.
Lurch had a point—one that reinforced her own instinctive sense it was the wrong move.
The Constilinium and the Chameleon’s intersection problem didn’t make sense to her mind, but her instincts were twitching like it mattered. She couldn’t see a time trail yet, not in the conscious part of her mind, but she smelled one. It hovered just out of reach, giving her an itch between her shoulder blades that Lurch couldn’t remove. If this Keltinarian man mattered to the overall puzzle, if he turned out to be a time pin, possibly shifted in some way, how was she supposed to deal with him? She wasn’t allowed, nor was she trained to deal with it. Regulations dictated that she return and report the problem, leaving someone with more experience to effect a repair. Two problems with that reg.
First, there might not be anyone with experience left to deal with it. And of course, there was their concern about possible time traps around the base.
The stream was complex. It wasn’t like someone could throw up a net across all time and snag a tracker. Any trap would have to be placed in the right stream or streams. If she hadn’t already seen the time attacker’s work, she might have risked it, but whoever it was did good work. Knew where and how to game the time system. And snagging low-level trackers would be easier, because they had certain vectors they were required to follow—the main reason she did her sideslips, but those were landing sideslips. That type of trap would be a lot harder to avoid in the stream, particularly close to the base when options narrowed.
Sh
e had an emergency portal recall device but was glad she hadn’t used it. Didn’t seem to be a coincidence that the Chameleon’s brother had been diverted during recall transit. It seemed to indicate that someone had thrown the net far, wide and deep. And closed that route to her as well. And if she did make it back, if the Council was corrupt, would they fix it?
Here, more even than out there, it sobered her to realize that there was no safe place for her. Here she risked causing a paradox, there she risked capture. She felt the weight of the challenge and her isolation, not just from Service resources, but from her family. She hadn’t seen them since her induction, but had planned to drop in when she got her first leave. She’d never felt so alien, so isolated from the familiar.
It seems an unfriendly place for me, as well. Lurch sounded a bit wry for someone whose risk was his continued existence.
I might be annoyed with you, but I’m not looking for a nanite extinction event.
I am pleased to hear you think it.
Sarcasm did not become him, if he could be becomed.
There are other ways to influence time. Ashe had been going through the data automatically downloaded into her head upon entering the Service. I just wish I had more information about time pins and how to deal with them.
I do not suppose it is an accidental oversight that it isn’t there.
I wish I could spend time in the center, get a big picture look at what’s happening. I get the sense of a pattern, a plan. If I could see more, I might be able to track it back to the source. It felt so weird to be here, on the base, but not on the base, all the resources just out of reach.
There is no guarantee that you’d see the real picture if the Service has been compromised.
He had a valid point. How did she, with so little data, arrive at the idea of a shifted time pin? Ashe hated to admit it, but it impressed her, even if Chameleon was wrong.
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