“Human meat is a bit slimy for my taste,” Greyblade commented, “but I take your point. No Ghååla, no rules, no enforcement. No Vultures. Is that why you come out here so much? Looking for ways around Nnal’s curse?”
Çrom laughed bitterly. “Wouldn’t you know it,” he said, “Nnal is the only Ghååla who actually has any power Beyond the Walls. He basically runs the place, since the others won’t let Him rule the Corporation for more than a few thousand years at a time, in between imprisonments. No, not quite ready to talk about that,” he shook his head again. “But it’s important to remember that even the most basic things we take for granted, that the Ghååla do in the Corporation, that the Power Plant makes possible … none of it works out here.”
“Alright.”
“Alright,” Çrom gathered himself. “This next bit, Gateway and beyond Gateway, is critical. It’s our shortcut. And you’re going to have to trust me.”
“You say that like it’s going to be difficult,” Greyblade said, “but you’ve proven resourceful and trustworthy up to this point,” and you’ve only died once as far as I know, he thought better of adding. “So go ahead.”
Çrom was evidently far more surprised and touched by this than he’d been expecting to be. “Okay,” he said.
And he went ahead.
ÇROM’S SHORTCUT (II)
“After Gateway,” Çrom said, “we will be flying directly into an interdimensional region known as the Belt. The Naskiraqad Belt.”
“The place that Hellpaths are afraid of, and eats Time Destroyers for breakfast.”
“Yep,” Çrom replied. “It’s … I guess the best way to imagine it is the wake of one Dimension – Naskiraqad – as it passes between the Dimensions around it.”
“That’s Dimensional physics a bit beyond my training,” Greyblade admitted.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s one of those things that can only happen out here,” Çrom told him. “We have to fly from Gateway out onto the Highroads and then all the way up to Naskiraqad’s back door, without stopping. At all. And without being stopped, which is critical. Ideally, without interacting with reality or the Liminal in even the tiniest quantum-observable way.”
“Should be easy enough, on the Highroads,” Greyblade said, aware that Çrom had left this for him to say. It would not, of course, be easy. Would, if Greyblade knew anything about the level of interference Skelliglyph was talking about, be impossible. But maybe near enough was good enough. “Especially if this place is as dangerous as you’ve done your best to make it sound. The Highroads should be even more deserted than usual.”
They did occasionally share their manifestation of the Highroads with other travellers. This was more common in places like the heavily-populated Corporation, but even out here they passed through areas of greater density. Ships entering relative speed at just the right moment, or moving at just the right speed, would occasionally appear in the white void with them. Never for very long, obviously. But even so, it was a statistical possibility – and one on which some very prosperous Highway bandits depended.
“Right,” Çrom agreed. “Should be. Still, it’ll take some luck, and we’ll have to randomise our field harmonics and other things, without actually changing our speed or profile enough to make us noteworthy.”
“Noteworthy to whom?”
“To anyone. We can’t encounter anyone or anything, for more than a few seconds. There’s an exact number, but let’s just say we have to avoid contact altogether.”
“Okay,” Greyblade said, and waited for the other foot to drop. “How long is this no-contact stretch?”
“Three years, eight months,” Çrom replied promptly.
“What?” Greyblade exclaimed.
“Then we’ll get to Naskiraqad, where we’ll park,” Çrom went on steadfastly, “for another three years and eight months. As close to exactly the length of time we took to get from Gateway to Naskiraqad proper as possible, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s close to seven-and-a-half years,” Greyblade pointed out, “on a ridiculously dangerous outbound shortcut that you said would take two. And has already been almost that. Certainly by the time we finally get to Gateway–”
“I know what I said,” Çrom replied, and Greyblade realised his hands were shaking around his coffee cup, rattling it lightly. The human was afraid – more afraid than Greyblade had ever seen him. “This jag out to Gateway is practice. Five months and change, it’s a hard leg but it’s nothing compared to what’s coming. And this is the part that makes the shortcut dangerous. Not the other places we’ve been through. If we manage this, it’s going to slice all of the next leg off our journey, and all the years along with it.”
“I’m still missing something.”
“There’s a Portal in Naskiraqad. It’ll take us right into the Godfangs’ territory. Right out to the ragged edge near the Enclave. It’s a big one, sort of a whole different breed of Portals that you get out here. Apparently.”
“I’m missing something else,” Greyblade said. Çrom was clearly still hesitant to take the plunge, so Greyblade opened his visor, took a long swig of mozo juice, and gave the nervous human a rare first-hand eyeball. “You mentioned Nnal,” he said. “Are we heading into some kind of Nnalic stronghold? Some outpost of the Enclave, since this Portal leads right there?”
“No,” Çrom said, and drained his coffee. “Naskiraqad is a … the whole Dimension … time goes backwards there. The whole Dimension is travelling backwards through time.”
Greyblade took the opportunity, since his visor was open, to grace Çrom with a blink of astonishment to go with the eyeball he’d already delivered. “So…”
“So,” Çrom said. “It orbits The Centre in the opposite direction to all the others. I mean, generally it’s just the Corporate Dimensions that orbit The Centre anyway, but over the aeons the near-Boundary Dimensions have been pulled along for the ride. We’re far enough out for that not to matter, but Naskiraqad still orbits, and it does it backwards, basically churning its way through a bunch of dead, motionless Dimensions. Doesn’t really matter, unless you’re a really specialised Dimensional physicist. But it’s dragged a whole bunch of damaged and warped universes into motion behind it – maybe even churned some into existence out of unreality altogether, if you believe the stories.”
“The Belt,” Greyblade nodded.
“Right. Naskiraqad’s wake. As it passes through normal extra-Dimensional space – you know, as normal as it is out here where there are no rules, and whatever ‘normal’ even means when you’re talking about the Liminal – there are a bunch of crazy reactions that’d need whole new disciplines of science to be invented to explain ‘em. And yeah, it apparently chews up Time Destroyers and leaves them sitting around twiddling their thumbs in a pocket of causal nullity for … however long Gant and his pals were going to be there.”
“They were trapped there somehow by interfering with the Naskiraqad Belt,” Greyblade did his best to contribute, thinking once again about the strange assembly they’d taken part in on Tomberland Mighty.
“I guess. Probably best to not even think about it. The whole Belt, behind and ahead, is pretty much no man’s land. Gateway, which we’re headed towards right now, is generally agreed to be the last safe location along the Belt – and it’s a long way from Naskiraqad,” he laughed humourlessly. “And it’s not safe.”
“Three years and change, in a Fhaste,” Greyblade said. “Yeah, I’d call that a long way.”
“Now this is what makes Naskiraqad dangerous,” Çrom went on. “You’ve probably figured out why we need to park there for exactly the same length of time we’re going to take from Gateway.”
“Presumably because once we go in there, we’ll also be going back in time so the two three-plus-year legs will cancel each other out,” Greyblade did his best to provide as preposterous an answer as Çrom seemed to be expecting.
“Exactly. And why we need to avoid any sort of interaction in that time.”
�
��Because we’d be creating a timeline full of interactions that were about to be cancelled out,” Greyblade said. “But–”
Çrom raised both hands. “We’ve got twenty-one weeks to deal with the what-ifs and the yeah-buts,” he said, “if you’re really going to insist on them.”
“Twenty-one weeks and then seven years,” Greyblade pointed out.
Çrom shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m going to be out for those years. When I say ‘avoid interactions’, I mean all of them. We can’t even gain seven years’ worth of boring conversations and games of Blind Beggar that we wouldn’t otherwise have.”
“Boring?” Greyblade objected.
Çrom smiled faintly. “Remember that railgun they used for cargo and occasional travellers back at Lonesome Ice?” he asked. “I bagged a couple of canisters of the sleeping agent while we were there. Before I died. It’ll basically put me into a fugue state. Dora will be able to keep my nutrients topped up. And I assume you have some similar … mode you can put yourself in.”
“Yes,” Greyblade said, “but that’s not the problem with this. It’s not even in the top ten.”
“I know,” Çrom said sympathetically. “Believe me, I know. Like, if we’re going one way through time and we go into a universe where it’s going the other way, don’t we just bounce back out and get stuck in a perpetual loop?”
“I didn’t even think of that one.”
“Short answer is, lots of people do. The Belt is littered with poor bastards who got themselves trapped in paradox eddies and stuff. Gant and his pals got off lightly. But there’s a way through. Observing all their rules is – well, it’s rule number one.”
“Aha,” Greyblade pointed.
“Aha,” Çrom echoed, “you caught my intentional slip of the tongue, then. Yes, Naskiraqad is inhabited.”
“Go on.”
Çrom sat back.
THOSE WHO MARCH
ON THE DAWN OF TIME
Naskiraqad. A Dimension among endless Dimensions, deep in the darkness far from the lights of the Corporation.
A Dimension that was, as far as anyone knew, quite unique. First and foremost, there was the issue of its age.
Naskiraqad, as far as anyone knew or dared to examine, had been born ancient. Or else, from its own standpoint, it had been born as crisp and new as any other universe, but at the dusty terminus of the aeons when the rest of the urverse had long since finished winding down. And it had been growing older, at a steady rate of one year annually, for all the Ages between the end and the present. Now it was striding through the Third Age, its metaphorical – and not so metaphorical – eyes fixed on the dawn of time.
Travelling into Naskiraqad was difficult. Chronological shear killed the majority of would-be time travellers, and that was no way to die. And if the rolling tsunamis of minutes and hours and millennia didn’t get you, there were plenty of other things that would. But you could get in there, and hunker down, and follow the Dimension as it surged back through time.
You couldn’t be in two places at once. If you overlapped too disruptively with your own presence in history you could wind up excised altogether, and that would be among the more lenient of the possible consequences. You couldn’t actually time-travel – not exactly. That wasn’t how it worked. In a sane region of the urverse, the Vultures would stop you, but the Relth did not venture Beyond the Walls.
But if you tried to use Naskiraqad as a crude time machine, the denizens of the Dimension would not allow it.
While there was a technically infinite universe full of ordinary beings living and dying in Naskiraqad, few of them knew about existence beyond the strange Dimension’s walls. And those few who knew, were confined by bonds stronger than causality itself. Traffic between Naskiraqad and the outside urverse was strictly controlled.
They stood at the Portals like sentinels, more powerful than the Gods and more terrible than the Relth. Older and stranger, it was said, than the very Infinites of the bright and spinning Corporation. Naskiraqad wrought its changes on anything to willingly join it on its relentless march towards the utmost origins of eternity. And when they got there – what then?
Probably better not to think about it. Probably for the best that it had already happened.
Naskiraqad was the home of the Shedders.
ABOUT TIME
Greyblade had heard of Shedders, of course. They were scattered through myth and folklore, even in the Corporation. It was generally agreed that they came from Beyond the Walls, but that was a lazy catch-all when it came to the stranger legends. Any craziness or inconsistency could be explained. Oh, they’re Aliens, there’s no Ghååla or laws of physics out there, so they can pretty much do anything. I mean, look at the Fweig.
Nevertheless, the Burning Knights had a file of sorts on the group, as part of a larger but admittedly pretty meagre dossier about Alien threats.
The Shedders39 weren’t exactly a threat, since they tended towards the enigmatic and the non-interfering end of the outsider spectrum. They were actually classified officially as an academic or intellectual discipline, although Greyblade was willing to admit this was a misleading categorisation and the way they behaved when abroad in the urverse was understandably going to be different to the way they behaved if you intruded on their home.
Still, that was part of the problem. Their forays into the forwards-in-time urverse were incredibly rare and unobtrusive, and the Corporate intelligence community hadn’t even known they had a home. Not at the levels of the Corporate intelligence community at which Greyblade operated, anyway, and that was quite high. They were, after all, defined by their ideology more than their biological composition, so they didn’t actually need a homeworld.
All Greyblade knew about the Shedders was that they were dangerous thinkers, askers of questions, iconoclasts who thumbed their metaphorical noses at the Vultures, and that the title was historically bestowed after a very long period of incarceration, exile, or some other form of seclusion. As to how long a Shedder was supposed to be locked away before it got to call itself a Shedder, the recurring line in mythology was Three Ages of Gods and Men. This, in turn, was generally agreed to be far more than the lifespan of just about any mortal creature known to the Corporation, so Shedders were usually depicted as or understood to be at least Demigods.
It actually – and Greyblade was rather horrified to find himself thinking this – made a lot of sense. As of the present day, there had only been two-and-a-bit Ages of Gods and Men, as far as recorded history and its Corporate nomenclature was concerned. And yet Shedders had been cropping up in stories and historical accounts forever. The only way any of them would have had time to attain the mantle would be if they were starting from some point more than three Ages in the future, and arriving in the present and the past in some impossible backwards fashion.
“Alright,” Greyblade said, “and Naskiraqad is where they all come from, and where they go and do their time. Or undo their time, as it were.”
“Nice one,” Çrom congratulated him.
“I have … many questions.”
“Get them all out of your system now,” Çrom advised. “After we’re done, I’m going back to knowing nothing about this place or how it works, just in case anyone is crazy enough to ask me,” he flicked his hands in a come-at-me invitation. “Let’s go.”
“Why don’t we just sit in Naskiraqad for an extra couple of years,” Greyblade asked promptly, “and return to the Corporation a few weeks after we left?”
“See, this is exactly why it’s so dangerous,” Çrom replied. “If we even try to do that, we’ll unravel a bunch of stuff we’ve already done by interacting with the urverse up to this point. That’s why we have to be non-contact from here on in.”
“Are you talking about time paradox?”
“Worse,” Çrom said. “In Corporate space, yes – we’d be talking time paradox. And Limbo would fix it, probably just by sighing and making us never-have-existed, or sending the Vultures
to do something horrible and ironic to us. But out here … the Ghååla don’t exercise Their rule Beyond the Walls, as we’ve seen over and over again since crossing the Boundary. If we fuck around with the space-time continuum out here, it’ll just be allowed to happen. Limbo will fix up whatever mess our passage left in Corporate space, but out here–”
“I’m still not seeing the problem,” Greyblade said. “Beyond the Walls, no physical laws, Limbo will fix things inside the Corporation, and we’re free to cut as many years off our trip as we like.”
“Sure,” Çrom waved his hands. “In fact why not stay longer, and get back to Earth just before the Last War of Independence? See if we can’t stop it from happening? Along with whatever you’re trying to recruit the Godfangs for? Who needs them when we can just stop whatever the threat is from happening?”
Greyblade had already discounted these possibilities as too risky simply by adding up his experiences so far, but he was curious. “Well?”
“We’re not free to just sit around in Naskiraqad and walk back the past few decades of Corporate history,” Çrom said firmly, although still with that quiver of fear. “I really need you to understand the danger here, Greyblade. You’re a soldier. If we fuck around with Naskiraqad, it’s not Limbo or the Vultures who will punish us – it’s the Shedders themselves. And they’ll do things to us that Limbo would never allow to happen in Corporate space.”
“I don’t have any factually substantiated accounts of Shedders doing anything to people,” Greyblade said. “The Three-Quarters Man might have stomped the occasional–”
“You’re not going to get substantiated accounts,” Çrom said. “That’s the whole point. But you saw Gant. Do you want to sit in this ship, parked in some out-of-the-way corner of a spaceport on the edge of the Belt, waiting for eternity to happen in one piece without our interference? Because that’s what we’ll get. If we’re lucky. Did you notice Gant was pretty okay with his whole predicament? That wasn’t fatalism, that was gratitude.”
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