Sunset of the Gods

by Steve White

  “Agreed,” Jason nodded. “But the Authority can’t handle it alone.”

  “I know.” Rutherford’s voice was desolate. The prospect of having to compromise the Authority’s sacrosanct status as an independent agency was one more blow. “We shall have to involve the government’s law enforcement agencies. Earth must be combed from pole to pole. This illegal displacer must be found!”

  “Easier said than done,” Jason cautioned. “Remember, they didn’t steal the Authority’s technology; they developed it themselves from Weintraub’s original work, in a superior form. It won’t be like searching for an installation the size of this one. Their displacer is compact enough to be hidden, and so energy-efficient that they could send a fairly numerous party equipped with an aircar twenty-nine hundred years back using a concealable power source.”

  This time a low moan escaped Rutherford. “And in the meantime,” he said in a dead voice, “we have no idea where to look for their various schemes of temporal subversion. You said the Transhumanists you encountered were from a time slightly earlier than the present—”

  “Yes, Franco let that slip.”

  “—but we don’t know how long they have been pursuing their nefarious program, nor how much further into our future they will be continuing to send expeditions back, nor where and when those expeditions will go. Our field of investigation is impossibly large. And we don’t know where to begin!”

  “Not altogether true. We know exactly what one of their schemes is: the Pan cult. And we know exactly how to scupper it.” Before Rutherford could speak, Jason leaned forward and spoke with grim, tightly controlled urgency. “I propose that you send me and Alexandre and a couple of other combat-trained Service men back to the moment after I left Pan, the point of arrival to be Mount Kotroni, where they were about to take him.”

  “But . . . but . . . you and Mondrago were already there,” stammered Rutherford, scandalized. “So you and your own earlier selves will be present simultaneously!” What Jason was proposing violated one of the most basic policies of the Authority.

  “Once there,” Jason continued, ignoring the interruption, “we’ll stop them from using high-tech means to induce panic in the Persians while staging an appearance by Pan. Then, as per my agreement with Pan, we’ll take him to Athens where he’ll tell the cultists that they’ve been played for suckers. Of course,” he added as an afterthought, “we’ll need certain rather special equipment and supplies.” He launched into a list. As he proceeded, Rutherford experienced more and more difficulty breathing, and by the time he was done the older man seemed on the verge of a stroke.

  Rutherford gradually regained the power of speech. “But the expense! The illegality! The. . . .” He pulled himself together. “You realize, of course, that while I have a great deal of discretion as regards the Temporal Service’s ordinary operations, I could not possibly take it upon myself to authorize anything like this. The entire governing council of the Authority will have to consider your proposal.”

  “Bring ’em on.”

  If Mondrago had seemed uncomfortable in Rutherford’s private sanctum, he was positively fidgeting in the understatedly ornate conference room that held a quorum—indeed, almost the entirety—of the council, sitting around a long table with him and Jason at one end and Rutherford at the other.

  The councilors had been summoned from around the planet to Australia—a summons sent under conditions of maximum security, for it had included the essential elements of Jason’s findings. Since their arrival they had seen and heard the supporting evidence, and no one was inclined to doubt those findings. Not that there had ever been any serious doubt, given Jason’s well-known reputation for competence, despite his equally well-known reputation as a wise-ass.

  His proposal, however, was something else.

  Helene de Tredville, a small woman of almost ninety standard years with white hair pulled tightly back into a severe bun, stared down the table at him. “So, Commander Thanou, do I understand that you want us to let you take modern weapons back to the fifth century b.c.?”

  “Modern weapons and medical supplies?” Alistair Kung’s voice—unexpectedly high-pitched, coming from such an overweight body—rose to a squeak on the last two words.

  “Yes to both. Actually, I’d also considered asking you to send back an aircar with an invisibility field.” Jason knew it was wicked to relish the signs of incipient cardiac arrest around the table. He relished it anyway. “Fortunately, Pan knows how to pilot the Teloi aircars, so we can use one of those, even though the lack of invisibility technology will be inconvenient. But as for modern weapons . . . the Transhumanists surely have them, and we can hardly be expected to go up against them with in-period swords and spears.”

  “But the medical supplies,” Kung began, only to be silenced by Jason’s expression. All the flippancy slid away, revealing what lay beneath it.

  “I promised Pan that if he did as I ask I would free him from his dependency on his Transhumanist and Teloi masters. I keep my promises. Since we’ve been back, I’ve had a chance to confer with medical specialists and ascertain precisely what he needs. We can take back a supply that will, quite frankly, last him as long as a twisted organism like him is likely to live. I intend to leave him the Teloi aircar and advise him to go somewhere out-of-the-way—maybe the part of Crete where Alexandre and I hid.” A ghost of Jason’s trademark raffish smile reawoke. “He can start a ‘cult’ of his own there to assure his safety. In a historyless place like fifth-century b.c. Crete, it won’t cause any problems.”

  “But,” dithered Alcide Martiletto with a flutter of slender wrists, “it’s all so improper! We’d have to violate our own rules and protocols in just so many ways!”

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Jason philosophized drily. Then, doing his best to make it seem an afterthought, he added, “There’s one additional benefit. We can rescue Dr. Chantal Frey.”

  “What?” Jadoukh Kubischev leaned forward. Unlike the frankly corpulent Kung, he could be described with minimal charity as “well-fleshed.” And in his case, the flesh was held up by a substantial bone structure. “Whatever are you talking about, Commander? You know perfectly well that this is impossible. The TRD restores the temporal energy potential of a person or other object, causing it to return to the time from whence it came. Dr. Frey’s TRD was separated from her and came back with you. Even if you were to take an extra TRD with you and give it to her to hold, it would be inseparably linked to the linear present of the time from which it made transition—as is she. It would return to its own linear present, but she would not. This is axiomatic.” He shook his head with a force that set his wattles jiggling. “No. That is the end of it. She is permanently stranded in Classical Greece.”

  “And besides,” Martiletto honked, “by your own account, the bitch turned traitor!”

  “No!” Jason took a deep breath and forced himself to keep his tone deferential. “I was there, and I ask you to believe me when I say she was . . . conflicted, and that I can win her back.” He turned to Kubischev. “And as for how . . . well, you all know the rule of thumb for bringing objects back with you when retrieved. The restored temporal energy potential, in a manner still imperfectly understood, seems to encompass not just your clothing but any objects you can conveniently carry, and therefore such objects require no separate TRDs of their own. Dr. Frey is a slightly built woman, and I’m a reasonably strong man. Yes,” he continued hurriedly, before the murmur around the table could coalesce into flabbergasted rejection, “I know, it’s never been tried with a human before. But I know of no theoretical objection to it.”

  From the far end of the table, Rutherford studied him shrewdly. “So that was what you meant about ‘getting her back.’ This, despite the fact that the Transhumanists were planning to send her back as an infiltrator—a scheme which was prevented only by your recovery of her TRD before they could re-implant it, and which must have had at least her passive acquiescence. Jason,
are you certain that, after your last extratemporal expedition, this isn’t a matter of . . . working out guilt over what happened to Deirdre Sadaka-Ramirez?”

  Once again, Jason recalled the Yogi Berra quote. He decided the humor wouldn’t be appreciated here. He kept silent, fearing that anything he could say might damage his credibility even more than Rutherford had.

  “However,” Rutherford continued, addressing the meeting at large, “that is really immaterial. Whatever deep-seated feelings and motivations may lie behind Commander Thanou’s proposal, the fact remains that he is right. This is the only point we presently know of where the Transhumanists’ plans can be attacked—their only current point of vulnerability. We must exploit it. For one thing, we may be able to acquire valuable intelligence about the Transhumanist underground in the course of the operation.”

  “Maybe from Dr. Frey, if she can in fact be turned and brought back for debriefing,” Mondrago ventured.

  “Yes,” Jason nodded. “Franco must have spilled something to her in the course of their . . . relationship.” He trusted himself to say nothing more. He was coping with the unaccustomed—not to say unimaginable—sensation of feeling gratitude to Rutherford.

  “An excellent point,” nodded Rutherford.

  “But the expense!” wailed Martiletto. “We just sent one expedition of four persons back nearly three millennia. Now you want us to send another!”

  “The Authority has fairly substantial contingency reserve funds,” said Jason, refraining from commenting on the council’s notorious stinginess in spending them. “If this isn’t an extraordinary emergency, I don’t know what is.”

  “It would require extensive preparation,” said Kubischev, wavering.

  “Of course,” agreed Jason. “But that doesn’t matter. What counts is not the time we depart from, but the time we arrive in the target milieu.”

  “Quite true,” said Rutherford with another nod, this time a brisk subject-closing one. “If there is no further discussion, I call for a vote.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Temporal Regulatory Authority solemnly maintained that its enforcement arm was not even quasi-military in nature. And, for a fact, the Temporal Service had never been noted for military punctilio. Nevertheless, the two new members of the team rose to their feet into something resembling the position of attention when Mondrago called out “Attention on deck!” and Jason entered the briefing room. They knew his reputation in the Service, and that he held the permanent rank of Commander in the Hesperian Colonial Rangers, not exactly an ill-regarded outfit.

  “As you were,” he said, studying the two as they resumed their seats. Like every officer who has ever led troops into battle, he would have liked to have had more of them. But he hadn’t dared to press his luck by demanding that more than four people be displaced such a vast—and correspondingly expensive—temporal “distance.” And he had to admit that, on short notice, it had been hard enough to find even two combat-trained people, not otherwise occupied, who possessed the particular qualifications required, including the ability to blend in fifth-century b.c. Greece. He didn’t really expect them to have to do any blending, but Rutherford had been adamant.

  It was that very difficulty in finding suitable people that had led Jason to accept a woman, despite his misgivings in light of the social milieu into which they would be displaced. And he couldn’t quarrel with Pauline Da Cunha’s combat record—in fact, on further reflection he’d decided he was lucky to have her after all. She was wiry, deceptively small, and dark enough to require a cover story as a Hellenized native of Caria in Asia Minor.

  Adam Logan was of average size (hence on the large side, where they were going) and unobtrusively muscular, with nondescript features and medium-brown hair and eyes. He was sufficiently unremarkable-looking to pass in a wide range of Caucasian-inhabited historical settings, which made him valuable to the Service. His quiet competence made him even more valuable.

  “By now,” Jason began, “you’ve gone through all the preliminary procedures, including your microbiological ‘cleansing’ and the acquisition of the appropriate dialect of ancient Greek through direct neural induction.” Jason didn’t really expect them to be doing any hobnobbing with the locals on this expedition; it was just something else Rutherford had insisted on. “You have also received extensive orientation on the target milieu in general terms. This is in the nature of your actual mission briefing.

  “You both volunteered on the strength of the highly classified information that was offered to you, including the involvement of the Teloi aliens. So you know that this mission is not our usual escort duty—nursemaiding teams of researchers. In fact, it’s unique in the history of the Service. This time we’re going up against illegal time travelers—a surviving cadre of Transhumanists, in fact.”

  “That last part helped induce us to volunteer, sir,” said Da Cunha. Logan’s expression confirmed it.

  “I know. I’m sure there would have been no lack of volunteers if we had put out a general call for them. We didn’t, partly due to security considerations but mostly because we could only use people with certain qualifications. We’re almost certainly going to be facing modern weapons, so we’ve obtained special permission to use such weapons ourselves. And you two are experts with those as well as with the various low-technology weapons we in the Service normally take with us into the past.”

  “What kind of firepower are we going to be dealing with, sir?” asked Da Cunha, who clearly did the talking for this duo. “We’ve heard that you had some run-ins with these, uh, Teloi when you were in the Bronze Age.”

  “The Teloi use rather low-powered neural paralyzers, designed to resemble heads—‘Heads of the Hydra’ they’re called—when dealing with the primitive local humans. For serious work, they have weapon-grade lasers; the only ones I saw were pistol-sized, so I can’t say whether or not they have anything heavier. As for the Transhumanists, I simply don’t know. I never encountered any of their stuff—I got the impression that they preferred to use the local stuff whenever possible, thus minimizing the chances of having some awkward explaining to do. But since they have no scruples about taking modern equipment, up to and including an aircar, back in time, we dare not assume that they didn’t take modern arms as well.”

  Da Cunha spoke up again. “What about us, sir? We do have scruples. Surely we’ve had to give some thought to avoiding the possibility of our weapons being observed.”

  That’s an understatement, thought Jason, recalling Rutherford’s jitters. “You are correct. A bit of forced-draft engineering was required. I had a hand in the design myself.” He reached out an arm, and Mondrago handed him what appeared to be a four-foot walking stick of the sort typically used by the ancient Greeks, perhaps a trifle stouter than most such sticks.

  “You will note a row of small knobs along the shaft, about a foot from one end, appearing to be natural bumps on the wood. If you depress the forward one. . . .” He did so, and the far end of the “stick” flipped open and folded out into a set of focusing lenses about three inches in diameter.

  “The basic mechanism is that of the standard Takashima laser carbine, but miniaturized and redesigned to fit into this shape. Like the standard Takashima, it functions in two modes: ‘kill’ and ‘stun.’ In the former mode, it is a weapon-grade laser; in the latter, the laser is powered down to a guide beam to ionize the air, along which an electrical charge is carried. These functions are activated by pressing the second and third knobs respectively. The fourth knob back is the actual trigger. The fifth knob activates a harmless visible-light setting, which may be useful as we’re going to be spending part of our time underground. Finally, the energy cells that provide power are fed in through this slot, opened by pressing the sixth knob. We are under orders to retrieve all ejected cells and bring them back with us.” Jason ignored his listeners’ expressions on hearing this, hardly the kind of order a combat infantryman wants to hear.

  “As you know,”
he continued, “even the standard Takashima is not a battlefield weapon; you wouldn’t want to take it up against opposition in powered combat armor. That is doubly true of this little improvisation, given the amount of power we’ve had to sacrifice on the altar of inconspicuousness. But it ought to be adequate for our needs, as any action we see should be at very short ranges.”

  Da Cunha looked thoughtful. “The stunner setting ought to work particularly well on this mission. For one thing, Greece has a dry climate; as we all know, the electrical charge does stupid things in rain or even high humidity. And as we also know, metal armor conducts the charge and actually attracts it.”

  “Agreed, with the caveat that our targets almost certainly won’t be wearing armor. However,” Jason continued, and his expression turned more chilling than he knew, “in the absence of orders to the contrary, your weapons should be permanently set on ‘kill.’ Remember, it’s impossible for us to bring back prisoners for interrogation, however much I’d like to. There are two exceptions to this, which I’ll get to in a few minutes.”

  Jason turned toward the rear wall of the room and touched a remote-control unit. Part of the wall flickered and became a screen displaying a map of the Marathon plain. He indicated Mount Kotroni, to the northwest of the plain. “We will materialize here, a few minutes after the point in time—precisely ascertainable thanks to my recorder implant—when Alexandre and I left Pan on Mount Agriliki.” His listeners’ looks of distaste at the mention of Pan were unmistakable, though quickly smoothed over. Their orientation had included imagery of the artificially engendered hybrid being. “At that time, the Transhumanists were on their way in a Teloi aircar to take him to Mount Kotroni, overlooking the current phase of the Battle of Marathon.” He touched more controls, and color-coded battle lines appeared. “The Persians will have hastily formed a new line, adjacent to their camp, to shield the embarkation of their ships. As the Greeks—advancing slowly at this point—approach this line, the Transhumanists’ plan to induce panic in the Persians by means of a sonic projector—a technique which, as we know, is useless against modern countermeasures, but which ought to serve this purpose—while having Pan appear on the slopes about here.” He zoomed in on Kotroni and used a cursor to indicate its eastern slopes. “Our point of appearance will be here, so we can arrive unobserved by them. The element of surprise should be total.” The cursor moved a third of the way around the peak, westward, to a level area on the opposite slope.