Vestiges of Time

by Richard C. Meredith

  The Shadowy Man once again took bits of material substance, molecules of air and pieces of floating dust, took them and shaped them with psionic force to create the hazy form that Mathers would later come to know so well. Back in the shadows of the cavernous

  stables, he bent waves of light, photonic particles, created himself, and waited.

  When Eric Mathers got back to where Sally Beall von Heinen sat on the ground beside the still figure of the man who was nominally her husband*- he hol- stered his pistol and bent to lift the unconscious man to his shoulder again. Then to Sally he said: “Go on. Get in the first car.”

  With resignation on her face, the young countess preceded the mercenary along the front of the stables to where the cars were parked.

  “Can you drive?” Mathers asked.

  “No,” Sally von Heinen replied.

  “I don’t believe you,” Mathers said with annoyance. “Get in front. Are the keys in it? Don’t He again.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  Mathers dumped the unconscious Von Heinen in the back seat and climbed in beside him. “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

  The motorcar started at once. The Shadowy Man knew that Mathers was pleasantly surprised by this, considering the state of the art of motorcars on this Line. Sally shifted into gear and slowly pulled out of the stables and onto the driveway that led back around the villa’s main structures.

  “Head toward Beaugency for the moment,” commanded the Timeliner mercenary.

  He did not speak again for a moment, his eyes going back into the stables, a strange, puzzled expression on his face. For a few moments he peered at the smoky, hazy form in the shadows at the rear of the stables, seeing the image of a human form that the Shadowy Man had built out of air and dust and light. Something that may have been fear went over Mathers’ face and his hand reached for the weapon on his hip.

  The Shadowy Man loosened his grip on the air, dust, and light. A movement of breeze. The hazy shape was gone.

  “What is it?” Countess von Heinen was asking. “Nothing. Go on.”

  The car moved on, away from the stables, around the main house, away.

  The Shadowy Man smiled within himself, and withdrew. . . .

  He moved. Not far through space and time now: a few miles across space, a few homs uptime, no motion at all across paratime. He would not speak yet, would not interfere. There was no need for interference yet. The crucial moments of time and paratime were yet to come. Now he would observe. And let Mathers gradually begin to become aware of him. Later he would speak, when it was necessary. For now . . .

  Under Mathers’ direction, Sally had driven the German motorcar to a rural wooded area of wartom France remote from the scene of the battle of the night before. Leaving Sally and the wounded Count tied with ropes, Mathers had then slipped away into the forest, where he had assembled a compact radio transceiver and made contact with the Krithian-Time- liner base of operations in the Outer Hebrides.

  “Eric?” asked a Krith’s voice from the radio earphone.

  “Yes, Kar-hinter, late, but reporting.”

  “Are you safe?”

  “For the moment.”

  “Count von Heinen?”

  “Alive, the last time I looked. I don’t know how long he’ll last, though.” Then he asked about the other Timeliners who had survived the firefight with the strange men from the alien skudder.

  “Safe. They managed to get through the Imperial lines just after dawn. Hillary is in a field hospital now. He will be fine, the doctors say.”

  “Good. Did they tell you what happened?”

  “Yes, but they could give no explanations. Can you?” The Shadowy Man was nothing more than a pres-

  ence now, a localization of mental forces at a spot near Mathers. There was nothing visible of him, but Mathers seemed to become aware of him anyway. He looked up, curious, puzzled, worried.

  Within himself the Shadowy Man was satisfied. That was sufficient.

  “No,” Mathers finally said into the transmitter microphone. “It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never seen a skudder like the one they were in.”

  “Nor I, from the descriptions.” The Krith paused. “Can you tell me where you are?”

  “Somewhere in France.”

  Kar-hinter advised Mathers to take Von Heinen and his wife into hiding if he could find a suitable place and then wait while radio triangulation determined their exact location. Then a skudder would be sent in to retrieve them.

  The Shadowy Man withdrew, moved himself uptime, across space. All was going well, exactly as he remembered it. As yet he would not have to interfere. In a few hours, as seen by Eric Mathers, the people who had already made an attempt to rescue Sally and Von Heinen would try again—and this time they would be successful, and would take Mathers their captive. That is how it would happen; that is how it must happen.

  Then he, the Shadowy Man, would come to watch, to assist when it was time to assist.

  He moved toward a particular point in time, caught it, froze it, moved carefully into it. . . .

  He forced matter and energy to form again the hazy figure, this time in the rear of a large hangar on the surface of the earth, above the underground complex called Staunton.

  Now Mathers had escaped from Sally and had entered the hangar, where he hoped to gain access to a radio that he could use to once again contact Kar-

  hinter in the Outer Hebrides, to inform him of the existence of Staunton and the Paratimers.

  What the Shadowy Man saw was: Eric Mathers holding a gun on a uniformed technician, forcing him before him across the floor of the hangar toward a craft shaped like a flattened egg, a sautierboat, a machine much like the skudders of the Kriths and Timeliners, yet in some ways very different.

  The technician opened the hatch of the large craft and stood for a moment, waiting for Mathers to tell him what to do.

  “Get in,” Mathers said, gesturing with his weapon.

  Then, as the technician obeyed, Mathers’ eyes opened wider, for he had caught sight of the hazy figure in the deep shadows at the end of the hangar. Fear went across his features. He spun toward the image, leveling his pistol.

  The Shadowy Man released his grip, and the air and light ceased to form the smoky image.

  Mathers looked into the shadows, more puzzled than ever, then shook his head and entered the sautierboat behind the technician, to use the radio inside the craft. . . .

  Only minutes uptime now, the Shadowy Man moved, the same point in. space. . . .

  Though now the appearance of the hangar had greatly changed: the Paratimers had discovered what he was doing, and had rushed forces into the hangar to deal with him before it was too late, with hand- weapons of astonishing power.

  Now the egg-shaped sautierboat was a mass of ruined, smoldering, twisted metal, and something flammable inside the craft was burning, giving off clouds of smoke that boiled out into the hangar. Men moved about, some carrying fire extinguishers, attempting to put out the fire.

  Other men stood above the torn, bloody figure they

  had dragged from the wreckage, a mutilated thing that was Eric Mathers, who might be dying.

  “Listen to me, bastard,” said the man called Scoti who knelt beside him. “If you hurt Sally, I’ll see that you live. You’ll live- so that I can slowly take you apart piece by piece.”

  Scoti rose, his fists knotted in anger, kicked the inert form savagely, then turned away when a man yelled from near the open front of the hangar: “Scoti, look up there!”

  “What is it?” He moved toward the hangar’s open doors.

  “Airships. British airships.”

  “Call Mica! Full alert!”

  The men dispersed, seeking shelter and more weapons. From the approaching airships, silvery, cigarshaped, rigid and metallic, gondolas extending almost the full length of their undersides, bombs began to fall, machine guns began to chatter.

  The hangar suffered a few near misses and one direct hit tha
t rained fragments of steel and burning wood down over the ruined sautierboat and the still form of Eric Mathers.

  The Shadowy Man moved, grasped air between psionic'hands, shaped it, moved it, made a voice speak into Mathers’ ear, a voice that was very much like Mathers’ own voice, and what the voice said was: “Stay alive, Eric. For God’s sake, man, hang on just a little while longer. They’re coming to help you. The pain won’t last long. You can stand it, Eric. I did.” This crucial point had been reached, achieved. The Shadowy Man had done what he could, now, here. The British airships would land, Mathers’ Timeliner confederates would rescue him, find Sally, arid take them both from Staunton before the Paratimers who defended the underground city saw that the situation was hopeless and destroyed it. The Shadowy Man withdrew. . . .

  Upward in time to the next day, across space to another place, from North America to South Africa, to a hospital room in which Eric Mathers, drugged and bandaged, lay in uneasy sleep, nightmares passing through his mind.

  The Shadowy Man touched the mind of the sleeping man, established a brief resonance, spoke to him without words, but tried to tell him that in time he would have the answers, in time he would be able to see through all the shams, the hes, the deceptions, the facades that the Kriths had built, would build, and the facades that the Paratimers had also built. In time he would see, but to do that he would have to survive.

  He knew that little of this would get through to Mathers, and that much of what did would be mixed and confused with the nightmares he was experiencing. But some of it would remain, aiding and reinforcing other things that were slowly coming into his mind, awarenesses that would only later blossom into realizations. For a while now Eric Mathers would be on his own, would have to' begin finding some of the truths for himself.

  Again he withdrew across time and space and paratime ... to a place months later in chronological time, worlds away in parallel time. . . .

  Now a battle raged in a moving skudder. Mathers fought to escape from the Krith named Tar-hortha and the men with him who had captured him and Sally, had separated them, and now carried him across the Timelines toward a destination they had not revealed to him. He fought back.

  Feigning drugged unconsciousness, he had slipped into augmentation and had taken a weapon from an unsuspecting guard, had swept the interior of the moving skudder with furious blasts of energy, set off an explosion that had blown away the hand of a giant named Marth, killed a guard named Sulla, and with an energy

  pistol he had burned to pieces a half-man named Mager,

  Now he stumbled over broken flesh and writhing bodies and reached the skudder’s hatch, undogged it, jerked it open—and was hit by something like a wind that was blowing out of the inner regions of a frozen hell.

  “You did it before,” he said aloud to himself, “and it didn’t kill you. Dammit, man, you can do it again.” But other expressions raced across his face, consternation, disbelief, fear. . . .

  The Shadowy Man forced a nucleus of energy into the skudder, held with it as it flickered from world to world. Now he would have to interfere again, would have to act, would have to make certain that when Eric Mathers leaped from this skudder, it was at exactly the right moment, the right place along the Lines. If he failed to do that . . . Well, he couldn’t fail.

  As Mathers stood uncertainly in the open hatch, looking, out at the flickering nothingness of rapidly passing worlds, the injured Krith within the cabin behind him began to move; he reached out a sable-brown hand to grasp Mathers’ left ankle. The sounds that came from the Krith’s full-lipped mouth were not English, were not Shangalis, were not even coherent. Mathers glanced back at the Krith and saw the mouth open in savage rage, rows of sharp teeth like those of a great cat coming to tear at his flesh.

  And his gaze went on beyond the Krith to the shadowy, almost formless figure of the Shadowy Man’s focuses of energy.

  Now! the Shadowy Man yelled wordlessly to Mathers, exerting a force against him that steeled Mathers’ mind and blew like a chill wind against his back.

  Mathers jerked his ankle from Tar-hortha’s grasp, plunged, leaped, and fell into nothingness right in the middle of a flicker!

  He was gone. But the Shadowy Man knew exactly where he was, and went to join him. . . .

  Hours uptime now, on the world into which Mathers had leaped from the skudder.

  It was dark and it was raining. Drugged, battered, beaten, the beginnings of fever in his body, Mathers lay on the sodden ground, no longer caring whether he lived or died.

  The Shadowy Man created a voice out of the air and made it speak the same words he had spoken to Mathers before, another time, another place:

  “Stay alive, Eric. For God’s sake, man, hang on just a little while longer. They’re coming to' help you. The pain won’t last long. You can stand it, Eric. / did.”

  He remained there for a while, watching the slow breathing, the rain falling, hearing a distant booming across remote hills. They would come. He would live.

  Uptime again, some weeks, across space, some miles . . .

  This one too would be critical. . . .

  A place called Tapferkeitenhaven, a miniature medieval German castle transported to the New World and the Imperial Colony of Sclavania, a few miles south of the New East Anglia border: Von Heinen slept quietly but Mathers could not sleep; there was too much on his mind. He lay back on the soft bed, staring at the white ceiling, and he wondered how many plots were going on in this castlelike home of the Sclavanian Herr Jurgen, how many different webs were being spun and broken, how many. . . .

  A point of energy moved through the corridors of Tapferkeitenhaven, observed the stealthy approach of two figures, a man and a woman, both with energy weapons in their hands. They were coming to do some killing.

  The nucleus of energy flows moved into the room where the two men lay, not quite forming into the

  shadowy figure Mathers had seen before, but allowing a tension to build in the air that would bring Mathers out of his reverie, would bring him to full wakefulness so that he might know of the approaching assassins.

  Mathers stirred, was aware. He moved, alerted his combat augmentation, slipped from the bed to the floor, knelt and drew a pistol from the drawer of the nightstand between the two beds, then rose to his feet. Outside, the assassins spoke in whispered Shangalis. Now Mathers was certain that Timeliner agents were coming to kill him. He was ready. He went into augmentation. The world slowed, reddened.

  The door slowly opened and a heavy man named Otto and a woman named Fredericka stood framed in the yellow torchlight from the hall. Mathers could see Timeliner energy pistols in their hands.

  Mathers pulled the trigger. The pistol loudly threw a heavy leaden slug into the face of the heavyset man. As his skull dissolved under the impact of the spreading lead, Mathers cocked the single-action pistol, pulled the trigger again, and put the second slug into the left breast of the pretty little blonde. Fredericka staggered backward, living seconds longer than Otto, long enough to pull the trigger of her own weapon and send a burst of furious coherent energy coruscating across the room, above Mathers’ left shoulder.

  He was temporarily blinded as he fired the third slug, but was later to find that it had hit the girl just above the navel, exiting through a shattered spine.

  As he came out of augmentation, Von Heinen was coming up from the floor, to which he’d rolled during the shooting, crying, “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Timeliners,” Mathers told him quickly. “They tried to kill us.” He shoved the smoking pistol into Von Heinen’s hand. “Tell them you did it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain later. Take the credit now.”

  Then Anglianers and liveried servants of Herr Jurgen began rushing into the room.

  That’s sufficient, thought the Shadowy Man, and disengaged himself from this moment of time, this fragment of space. . . .

  The raid was in progress when the Shadowy Man again froze a slic
e of time and entered it. . . .

  Then a firefight was raging in the Krithian skudder pool at Fort Lothairin. Devoto Baugh, Mica, Kjemi Stov and a handful of Paratimers attempted to prevent Mathers’ theft of a skudder. Anglianers and Albert von Heinen had died, but Mathers had made his way through blood and flame to take command of a skudder. And as Mica took mortal wounds, bullets from his weapon penetrated the base of Mathers’ skudder, damaging it, slowing its escape.

  The skudder pool’s lights surged to full brilliance, illuminating the broken, bloody tableau. Kjemi Stov—■ whom Mathers had believed to be a Paratimer, but who was something else—was now in augmentation and charged toward the skudder with a cry of insane rage on his lips, the words he yelled in the Shangalis of the Timeliners.

  And into the bright and bloody skudder pool charged the troop that had waited until this moment to spring their trap, a troop of blue-clad Timeliners with energy weapons, olive-clad Sclavanians firing slug throwers, all led by a sable-skinned Krith with a look of fury and of triumph on his flat features, Tar-hortha!

  He too was in X5 augmentation and he yelled above the roar, screaming in Shangalis—Mathers thought he could hear him even through the skudder’s dome: “You have lost, Eric. You have lost again.”

  Still moving as only a man in augmentation can, though wounded twice, Mica fired his submachine gun onca more before he died, not into the Anglianers so much as through them toward the Krith and his augmented Timeliners. Energy weapons replied to his slug

  thrower—and Mica’s mutilated body seemed to explode in their blaze.

  Kjemi Stov, untouched by the lead and energy bursts that swept the shed, had almost reached the skudder. Now Tar-hortha was close behind him.

  And as Mathers screamed out his fury at Mica’s dying retaliation, the Shadowy Man reached out with a mental probe into the wrecked circuits of the skudder’s base, examined the circuits, analyzed them, and drew out of his Mathers-memory schematic diagrams and wiring charts. The circuits were not destroyed, though nearly so. And to repair them, if but briefly and barely, would require a great deal more of him than the mere forming of a shadowy figure or the creation of sound vibrations in the air. The Shadowy Man was not a material being, but he could produce limited effects on matter. So, he applied force here, then there, twisting atoms and molecules, grabbing flowing electrons and moving them. . . .