“They are members of the Time Council.” The not-zombie looked and sounded shaken.
Not stirred.
Blynken? His head was starting to feel like it had a revolving door.
Em rocks. Seriously dude.
How could he complain when she fascinated him, too? He couldn’t crawl into her head, but he wanted to stay in her life. He wasn’t sure what it meant—
You’re in love, dude. Get a clue.
It made a change from oh my darling, he supposed. Interesting that Blynken had assimilated more Em talk than Nod—who now felt gone. He needed to sort out who was where, but it would have to wait. Kissing would have to wait, too. On the other hand, thinking was definitely indicated. Luckily for them both, he could listen and think at the same time.
You’re like a multitasking king, dude.
“Yeah, they said they were that,” Em said. “Not that I knew what it meant.”
“Of course you met them.” Robert wasn’t surprised. At least he’d expected this unexpected. Or had learned not to be surprised by it?
“They arrived packing self-important. I’d have let them have at it, but it seemed dirty pool after the not-Colonial helped us, so I warned them. Then they tried to bargain with the evil overlord’s name but Carig spilled it without the bargain, which made Glarmere mad.”
Inside his head, Blynken bristled and Robert knew why—though Glarmere had lost more from the confrontation with his sister than the nanites.
“It was beyond lame, because we know I don’t know anything worth bargaining over, but I thought it might matter to you. It’s some dude named Faustus—like that isn’t a total alias. They completely bought it, too, which is lame, until I told them no way any sane mom would name their kid after a creepy guy whose claim to fame was selling his soul to Satan and they said it wasn’t possible, but looked kind of aha until it sunk in they were still hosed. Which, you know, confirms my no questions position, because knowing didn’t help them. And then they attached themselves to me, which would have been mildly okay if they hadn’t shrieked like girls when I took the bug out.” She leaned into Robert, allowing him to gather her in to his heart. “I was very brave.”
A version of brave anyway. And she is a girl, so shrieking like one is okay, dude, because like, she is a chick.
He smoothed her flyaway hair back and his chest hollowed out. Blynken was right. It was love. Would she believe him? He wished the un-zombie would leave so he could find out.
“That’s a serious breach of security if that is a fake name. Not that we know any of their names. If someone knows your name, they can go back and mess with your past. Well, in theory they can go back and mess with your past. Going back isn’t that easy.”
“Wow, aha moment for me. I did wonder…” her voice trailed off and Robert wondered if the peeps had something to do with it. Not a good plan to mention them in a place so hostile to their existence.
“We should get moving,” Robert said, because they should get moving and because the not-zombie was starting to look a bit smitten with Em. While he could understand it, he didn’t like it. And he didn’t trust the guy. Don’t believe what you’re told. He might suck at expecting the unexpected, but he could do that one.
The not-zombie looked alarmed. “We’ll be captured if we leave this place.”
“We’ll be captured if we don’t,” Em said, pointing to the zombies on the next roof staring at them. “Just put your zombie on, though we should probably wait until we’re out of sight of those gomers. No clue if they have a clue.”
Robert liked every part of her suggestion, but the part where he’d have to let go of her, but he knew it had to be done.
“Our zombie on?” The not-zombie began to look slightly less enamored of Em.
He’s a girl, too.
“Walk the walk, look the look, dude. Blend. You should be really good at it, since you were one, like five seconds ago.”
If the not-zombie felt inclined to argue or take offense, he lost his chance when the horizon ate half the building next to theirs.
THIRTY-THREE
“If someone is trying to control time, then this is time ground zero, the epicenter of time and the Time Service. This is where time travel began, where the Service began. I would postulate that this is the only place he can be and not be wiped out by his machinations. He has to be here some when.” Ashe, a bit surprised by what she’d just said, studied the statement and found it felt true—strange, but true. And it might explain her sense of the stream spinning around the place.
Chameleon tensed. “Does that mean my brother is here, too, in another time?”
Ashe hesitated, wishing she could tell her yes and be done with it, but she had a feeling one couldn’t ever really be done with the Chameleon. She shook her head. “If he’d have come here in a different there, I’d arrived there, not here. I was hooked into his transport trail. Whoever diverted it, had to have known that could be done, because the diversion happened after I would have had to spike out.”
“What happens if you don’t spike out?” the man asked.
“Your atoms get splattered over all time. They say it isn’t painful.” Ashe didn’t know how they could know that, but they seemed quite certain. Of course, they were always certain until they weren’t.
Chameleon’s face tightened, then softened into thoughtful. “I wonder if there is a way to get him to come to our time. I suppose Conan’s girl tagging left with him?”
Why had he chosen to tag this time? Ashe felt a quiver of something. What if our—
Perp?
Ashe recalled the word from old Earth vids and decided she liked it, since calling him a he had become tiresome, not to mention mentally confusing. What if our perp tagged other times? Though knowing what the perp had done didn’t tell her why he was doing it or even when. Motive, means and opportunity. Motive was the key to finding his means. Could it be the key to his when? Her thoughts felt fragmented, like they were going in too many directions. She needed to clear her mind and think her way through—
We all need to. Use your resources. She thinks in ways you don’t and vice versa. I know things you don’t. Let us in before we run out of time.
He was a fine one to talk about shutting people out. Ashe had to fight back a sharp retort. We are so going to talk when I get five minutes. And then, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me when things started to go wrong. I deserved to know nanites started this.
We were young, so young when we emerged into this world. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. Our databanks were filled with knowledge but we didn’t understand all of it either. It was just data to us, raw and exciting. Then she freed us and her mind was a perfect compliment for who we were. She needed us and we needed her. It felt normal, natural to share, to teach, to learn, to figure it out together. We didn’t know what we’d done until it was too late. And then…
She felt his loss, his grief when she’d died, though she wondered if he hadn’t meant her to pick up on that. Or maybe he did. Don’t believe what you’re told. That could include what he wanted her to feel. Trust, the key component in a hosting, had been lost and would have to be rebuilt.
We did our best to contain what followed with the result that someone now seeks to eradicate us. He paused, seemed to sigh. Even with what I know, I am not sure we can fix this. What we have seen in the stream, events have gone well beyond our knowledge or understanding. This perp is pushing boundaries in every direction, though I agree that knowing his motivation could be the key to stopping him. But it will take all our skills. None of us can do it alone.
As long as you quit holding out on me…she knew she sounded petulant as she gave reluctant assent to the joint sharing. Heard him request their permission then bring them into a shared thought stream. It wasn’t total sharing. She and Lurch both had information to protect and she assumed the woman did, too. If they weren’t careful, they could still wipe each other out of existence and assure the unknown perp an uncont
ested victory. When Lurch had shared the critical data, Ashe felt the Chameleon’s thought processes ramp up.
“Motive, means and opportunity.” She nodded. “If you know he is part of the Council, shouldn’t that be your point of attack?”
“The attacks are traveling back through time, not forward, and he has made the future unstable. In the stream it felt…fluid. And we have not received updates.”
“Updates?” the man frowned.
“When we impact the past, it is supposed to ripple forward. Lurch’s databanks should have updated with the changes and showed us the long-term impact of those changes, but there’s been nothing.” Ashe’s throat dried at what that might mean. “If I could make it back to the base, which is not certain, I still wouldn’t know which one is our perp, so I wouldn’t know who to trust—or if any of them would believe me.” She allowed acid into her voice, felt Chameleon’s speculative gaze assessing her. If she found out how new Ashe was to the service, would she lose faith in her ability? If she did have doubts, it didn’t show on that impassive face. You work with what you’ve got. Was that another of her strictures? She was, Ashe could concede, somewhat interesting.
“Okay.” Chameleon allowed a thoughtful frown to alter her face. “So, you think there is a link between the time interference point, like with Conan, and the perp? You just need to find it?”
She made it sound a reasonable goal. The impossible just takes longer. That link was harder to see than the one to steam technology, she could concede, though didn’t feel compelled to concede it aloud. Was Shan part of the link or a useful diversion like Twitchet? The Constilinium might be the reason for Shan. And he was a pin, or presented as one. When they’d removed the device from him, something had happened in the time line, something the removal had stopped? It felt like trying to follow a path through a spider’s web.
“Links, a line of reasoning, or a logic that makes sense to the perp.” Was it something she could find in the stream? Ashe could almost see the ball of information spinning in the Chameleon’s head. It turned, changed shape, twisting one direction, then another as she looked for a pattern.
“The exploration into steam technology indicates a desire to inhibit the peeps’ interference, so let’s assume for the moment that it is a side line to the main attraction,” Chameleon murmured. “If you take that out it leaves Conan and lots of missing time trackers. And possibly a desire to control—or destroy all time. If you wanted to launch a massive time attack, then neutralizing the main opposition would be important.”
Even if the perp removed every person from the base, there is a failsafe. It is a dead man’s switch that will activate under certain circumstances.
“What circumstances?” the man asked the question.
If all members of the Council are terminated.
“Except he’s not going to kill himself,” Chameleon pointed out.
It will also activate if sensors detect a massive time disturbance.
“If he’s diverting sensor data—” Ashe objected.
It is not possible to divert data from the fail safe. It is isolated from all systems and operates independently.
“Okay, so he needs to neutralize the base and the fail safe.” Chameleon shifted in her chair, as if she wanted to move.
It’s a giveaway. Ashe heard the old family stricture in her head and suspected she’d met the author of that one, too. Perhaps the author of all of them. “But he needs the base to protect him, to survive a huge time disruption—assuming the base could survive.”
If he had control of the base, he could draw down the shields, using all the power to protect a small section.
“That leaves the fail-safe.” Chameleon gave into the need to tap lightly on the desktop. “How does he neutralize it?”
Ashe could feel her below-the-surface longing to act. Or perhaps it was her own she sensed. She had to fight back a few giveaway moves, too.
It is not supposed to be possible. If the base came under attack, nanites are programmed to protect and defend key systems, including the fail-safe.
“Unless someone had figured out how to neutralize them,” Ashe said, seeing the nanites blinking out of existence when she’d tried to access the time trap.
“A virus?” the Chameleon asked, her voice going flat with menace.
The nanites have formidable protections in place and those protections have increased with the opposition against us. We have not exposed our base code to anyone since, he paused, you.
“The impossible just takes longer,” Chameleon pointed out.
“If he is in the Service, as we suspect, then he has all the time he needs to crack the codes,” Ashe added.
Chameleon leaned back in her chair, as if she needed distance from the temptation to tap. “Maybe he isn’t worried about code cracking. We know he’s developed that anti-nanite chemical. And that his snares extinguish nanites. He could start with a chemical attack, then use his anti-nanite whatever while the nanites are trying to recover from the first attack.”
“The chemical assault would serve as an excellent distraction. All attention would be focused on that,” the man said.
Their clinical assessment chilled Ashe.
To stop evil one must sometimes think like it.
“That’s why he has tried to find you,” Ashe said. “He knew you might be able to divine his plan. I don’t think he realizes you are a lynch pin, that if he had succeeded—”
A not nice smile flickered briefly across her face. “—it might have created problems for him he hadn’t anticipated? While I’m glad he has failed, it would have been an amusing irony.”
“Do we know what form the time attack will take?” the Chameleon’s man asked.
“I would imagine that is where the time pins come in, though I don’t see how he could pull them all at the same time.” Unbidden came the memory of Selnick in the time snare. How far could a time pin be shifted? Or contained? At what point would time notice and react? She thought about the disturbances she’d observed, the one that almost hit while they were removing Shan’s device. Were all time assaults keyed to time pins? Were there other ways to attack the time stream? She had a sudden thought. “Is there any indication that the device we removed from Shan could be remotely detonated?”
The data collected from the surviving nanites scrolled through her head. She had to assume it scrolled through theirs, too.
“No sign of detonator, or anything to receive a frequency,” the Chameleon muttered. “Unless the power source has some kind of built-in decay rate, then no. That doesn’t mean there aren’t devices out there with that capability.” She straightened, flexing her shoulders. “We have to assume he’s figured that out, too.” Her gaze arrowed to Ashe. “So we think we know what he plans. How do we stop him?”
“You have to find his safe room. There is no way he could have modified the base in the future, so it had to have been done well before it became a base.”
“He could be using one of the original Garradian labs,” the man said. “We know of at least one hidden room. There are probably more. They seem to have had many secrets.” He exchanged a secret look with his Chameleon.
“Maybe your fan girl has some ideas,” Chameleon said, with a mischievous grin that turned her face unexpectedly charming. Ashe must have looked puzzled, because she chuckled. “This hologram has a serious crush on him.”
“She must love you,” Ashe said, before she thought it through.
Chameleon laughed, and then seemed surprised she had. “You have potential, great, grand whatever.”
“When we find it what do we do about it?” the man asked, with an air of calling them to order, though he also seemed pleased at their tentative peace.
Lurch sent her the data on how to plant a beacon using drones.
“And if he’s already launched his attack?”
“We will endeavor to stop it in the stream,” Ashe said with more confidence than she felt. Logic told her that if this perp h
ad gotten his knowledge from the nanites, then the solution also lay with the nanites.
In theory—
If he can do it, we can figure out how to stop him. A pause. We have to.
“Perhaps we can make his hiding place less habitable as well, force him out into the open,” the man suggested.
“We’d have to do it to every possible bolt hole,” the Chameleon murmured, clearly happy to have a task. Her gaze homed in on Ashe, a hint of worry in their depths. “You sure you can stop the wave?”
Her chin lifted. “We have to, so we will.”
“Ballsy.” She smiled again. “I like ballsy.” She sobered. “I wish we could go with you.”
Ashe felt her first, real smile in a very long time curve her mouth. “Perhaps we will fight together another time.”
Chameleon tipped her head. “Show me your uniform again.”
It wasn’t a request, but Ashe found she didn’t mind—other than the embarrassment of its tightness and it’s over use of silver. Lurch de-cloaked her again and the Chameleon’s brows shot up.
“A guy designed it, right?”
Ashe laughed and nodded.
“We can do better than that and give you a few more weapons to work with.” She stopped. “If you can use our stuff?”
“I have used many of your weapons in sims.”
She is proficient. And you know I can assist.
“Right. Well, let’s repair to my third favorite place.” She flicked a loaded glance at her man, but this time Ashe’s stomach didn’t lurch.
They were still a bit creepy, but in an acceptable direction.
THIRTY-FOUR
Smith wasn’t sure when he realized that the horizon had decided to come and meet them, that it was now eating the city in large gulps. He tried to stop. Couldn’t, quite stop, though he managed to slow his pace some. It felt like trying to fight clear of an irresistible undertow. And it felt wrong. They were being compelled toward the degrading edges, being compelled to destroy themselves, though it didn’t feel like compulsion. It felt easy, it felt right to go forward, which meant it wasn’t. He debated not fighting, since he hadn’t seen the wench with the wrench or had a moment of inspiration on how to escape the contracting reality.
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