Empress of Eternity (28 page)

8 Tenmonth 1351, Unity of Caelaarn

Maertyn didn’t even try to ask Maarlyna any questions until after he and she had each eaten a healthy portion of the still-warm cheese, potato, and lamb casserole that had been left on what served as a pantry table. Then they had walked back up to what had been their main-floor study, and Maertyn poured two goblets of a Zaendan red that he’d been saving for a special occasion that had never come. The Voharan carpet looked the same, and so did the ancient chairs from Norlaak…except Maertyn could see/sense the light-sheathed consoles that seemed to be everywhere and yet not there at all.

Only when Maarlyna had seated herself and taken several sips from the monogrammed crystal goblet did Maertyn finally ask, “Can you tell me what it is that you’re doing? What you were doing with those people I could barely make out. I could only sense and understand a little, and it didn’t make much sense to me.”

She frowned, then pursed her thin lips for a moment, setting the goblet on the side table. “I didn’t really understand until it happened. It’s something that…no one else can do. The ancients, the ones who built the Bridge, they thought there would always be some people who could see…the universe…as it is, or maybe they thought that there were ways to train people…”

“Maybe they didn’t even think about the future.”

“They did fight to make sure that there was one…” Maarlyna picked up the goblet and took a small swallow, rather than a sip. “They set up the Bridge to seek keepers.”

“You say that there’s no time, or that time doesn’t exist, and that would mean that across all time there’s no one but you who can do this…whatever it is? That seems…strange…”

Maarlyna shook her head. “They have to live in a time—one of the event-points—contiguous to the Bridge…and no one else ever has…or will, not so far as the last keeper and the Bridge systems could determine.”

“How close—physically—do they have to be?”

She did not speak, and her now-silver eyes darkened for several moments, before she finally answered. “The Bridge systems can detect anyone with such abilities on the same continent, farther under some conditions.”

“You’re saying that in thousands of years…” Maertyn broke off.

“Hundreds of thousands…it could be millions of years.” Her eyes brightened, again almost to tears. “How could I say no? How many people would not come to be…to know love and joy?”

“…and fear and disappointment,” Maertyn added dryly.

“Maertyn…” Her voice was soft.

“I know that sounds cynical, but I’m feeling a little that way with all of this.” More than a little, but he wasn’t about to voice that. “I’d like to concentrate on a few things more immediate. We’re still trapped in here. What about us? And the Gaerda?”

“Oh…they’ve just left a group of soldiers in a portable hut of some sort. There’s more snow falling, and I almost feel sorry for them…” She shook her head. “I forgot. All this seems so natural, and it’s not. It’s like I know things that I didn’t know I knew until I do them. It’s very strange.”

“You can see or sense beyond the walls?”

“Farther than that. I don’t know how far. I haven’t tried, except a ways out into the ocean to find the warship. Not inside buildings or things, except inside the Bridge.”

“What warship?”

“The one threatening the Vanir. That’s not now.”

Maertyn took a solid swallow of the Zaendan. His wife was talking about warships he couldn’t see that existed in other times. “But you can’t use weapons…did I understand that correctly? So how will we deal with the Gaerda? What about things like power and food? You do need to eat, don’t you? You must, after all you just went through.”

“If I’m…awake.”

“Why wouldn’t you…The canal has some sort of life-suspension?”

“It’s more just being out of time…”

“I thought time didn’t exist,” he teased, trying not to sound forced.

“The keeper would say that it’s being separated from event-points so that continuity is stopped.”

“The keeper would say?” he asked with a grin he didn’t totally feel.

“I’m still two people…”

“In one body.”

“I was going to say that…” She shook her head again. “It’s not so much two people as me and another person’s skills and memories.”

“Who told you to run off before you knew what had happened to deal with some problem? You just dragged me…as if you weren’t quite you…”

“It wasn’t like that. I was the one who decided. I was afraid that I wouldn’t remember. I still didn’t understand time. That was because I needed to integrate…a lot of things…and I was worried I’d lose hold of…aspects of things, especially with the Vanir.”

“You’re simplifying for me, aren’t you?”

“Yes. We don’t have words for some of it. I have to think in the old keeper’s language…”

“You learned another language…like that?”

“I didn’t have much choice, dearest. It just happened. Does it bother you?”

“What about the…Vanir? Did you learn their language?”

“No. The Bridge structures do that.”

“Are they ancient, too? The Vanir?”

She shook her head. “We’re ancient to them. I haven’t told them. I think their leader—she’s something like a soldier-scientist—knows that.”

“Did you say something about not having weapons to help them?”

“I did.”

“So you don’t have any way to deal with the Gaerda?”

“Not without causing a disaster. The Bridge is a weapon. Even the keeper’s memories were not clear. What is clear is that to use it again as a weapon will destroy Earth.”

“Of course.” Maertyn nodded. He did have a feel for that, from all his studies. “It’s somehow outside of time. That means that its mass and energy are as well. To have an effect on matter, it would have to become real, and if it destroyed the ancient moon the first time…”

“There’s great horror around those memories.” Maarlyna’s face and eyes stiffened, almost as if she were retreating into some past distance. “Almost no one and nothing survived, except for the few in the Bridge.”

“That was a long time ago,” ventured Maertyn.

“It was.” A trace of a smile appeared. “Now I know I won’t forget.”

“Forget what?”

“The others. The ones I haven’t dealt with yet. They’re in their own event-point, and I don’t have to hurry. Right here is the only place where I can’t wait if something has to be done.”

“Does something have to be done here?” Maertyn frowned.

“In a little while, after we talk some more.” She lifted the goblet again.

For several moments, the chamber was silent.

“I still don’t understand. Why you? How?”

“The keeper sensed me. There’s a field…something…around…me…or there was after the operations…the procedures. You were drawn to the Bridge…to the canal…there are images of what was, is, and will be…they reverberate through time and through minds…”

Maertyn thought back. He really hadn’t even considered the canal research project before…not until Maarlyna was recovering and it had been clear that she would recover. It had been one of a number of proposals stacked up in his console. But he still couldn’t say why he’d picked it. “How can the Bridge…the keeper…do that?”

“It can’t make anyone do anything, but it can amplify images…feelings…and sometimes people respond. Most times they don’t.”

“And I responded, all because of you?” Maertyn asked.

“Yes.” She stood, took several steps, until she stood before his chair, and held out her hands.

He took them and rose, as her arms went around him, and her lips touched his.

34 Quad 2471 R.E.

The light and darkness split…or shivered…and flaked away, leaving Eltyn, Faelyna, and Rhyana standing in the same chamber. This time the equipment consoles had diminished in size and were sheathed in silvered-gold light. Before them stood a tall woman in a scarlet singlesuit. Her hair was silver-gold. Behind her stood an even taller figure so shadowed in silver that Eltyn could not make out his face—if he were indeed even a man.

Who are you?
Eltyn had spoken the words aloud, but they came out as if pulsed on the private net.

She said something, but the words made no sense…not at first, but after a moment, he could hear them, as if they had been pulsed to him.
I am the keeper of the Bridge…what you call the canal.

Why couldn’t we communicate before?
asked Faelyna.

I was not prepared. What disaster threatens you?

How were they supposed to answer that? Eltyn glanced to Faelyna, who did not show any expression. Finally, he offered,
The Ruche government has been overthrown, and we took refuge in the canal station where we were doing research. The usurpers tried to destroy the station with a nickel-iron meteorite.

Eltyn looked to Faelyna.

She added,
The fall of Hururia and the Ruche to barbarism…and the sand and heat, it would appear.
After a moment, she went on.
Who are you, and why are you responding to our attempts to gain control of the functions of the canal?

I am the keeper of the Bridge…the canal.

Why have you never appeared before?

I am not in what…you would call…your time.

What we would call time? Is not time…time?
asked Eltyn.

“Time” does not exist. Intelligences perceive the continuity of interactions within their event-points as time…

Eltyn didn’t know what to say.

We experience time,
Faelyna replied,
and there is a temporal component to the controls of the doors and windows of the station.

The controls that govern the Bridge are in levels, linked to degrees of event-point continuity.

Time by any other name,
Faelyna insisted, following her words with an equation.

In response came an equation, and then another.

Eltyn and Faelyna exchanged glances. He didn’t understand the second equation, but it was clear that Faelyna did.

What’s happened outside the canal?
interjected Rhyana.

An object from beyond the atmosphere struck the western end of the Bridge. The energy was transferred to the water and the seafloor. Nothing living remains within…a kay(?) of this terminus of the Bridge.

Can you help us? Besides keeping us alive inside the canal?
asked Faelyna.

The woman in scarlet was silent for a time, and she looked back at the shadowy silver figure. Then she seemed to sigh.
Tell me more.

The riffies took over and The Twenty overthrew The Fifty…
began Rhyana.

The world warming threatens the Ruche…
Eltyn stopped.

The keeper laughed softly.
One at a time, please…

9 Tenmonth 1351, Unity of Caelaarn

Maertyn and Maarlyna sat the Laarnian chairs in the chamber he had once come to think of as the study. Before she’d begun to explain what she had learned from the second group she’d “visited,” he’d turned his chair so that it faced hers more directly. That way, he could almost ignore the light-sheathed ghost consoles that haunted the room…except that when he looked at Maarlyna and listened, the silver-gilded light extended itself around her, emphasizing her, like some ancient monarch, and her eyes and hair held a strange luminescence. Or was that just the interpretation of his own senses? Would he ever know?

“The Ruche people…they sound like they live in almost a hive culture,” he finally said. “They all look alike—”

“The ones I saw did. They all might not, but I think you may be right,” replied Maarlyna.

“They don’t have even the weapons we do, from what you’ve said, and almost all the people just went along like sheep with the new tyrants.”

“Do most people in the Unity really care if Tauzn becomes the next EA?”

Maertyn paused. Her voice was calm, almost gentle, but…He decided to go on. “They’ll support Tauzn because they believe that D’Onfrio isn’t getting results, and they’re frightened…even when they’re the ones who’ve elected people who are cautious.”

“What if The Twenty are just like Tauzn? What if they gained power because those in control weren’t solving the problem?”

Maertyn paused before replying. “From what you said, their problem is worse than ours. We’re fighting the ice, and they’re fighting warming so great that where our fertile lands are they have desert, and where we have ice, they have forests and cropland. And because whatever this Fifty is or was couldn’t stop the desertification, there was a coup, and some sort of tyranny took over. At least, we don’t have the Earth burning up on us.” He paused. “Are they in the future, too?”

“Yes. Not so far as the Vanir.”

“How far are the Vanir, then?”

“I can’t tell. I don’t see things that way…but it’s far. They’re different, physically, especially the women. They’re bigger than the men, and their hair actually changes color, almost as if each strand has tiny lights in it, and they can consciously focus their eyes, I think. Well…the Bridge systems made that observation.”

Maertyn found himself fingering his stubbly chin. “With all those changes…did they come from the Ruche people or from us? Could it be that Tauzn gained control and forced both genetic changes and geo-engineering…?”

“And when the solar cycles changed, the Ruche ended up facing a runaway green house effect?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. It takes time for a society that rigid to evolve from the ruins of another, and anthropogenic warming builds faster than that. Then again, it might not, if there were significant depopulation.” He paused. “These three want you to help them?”

Maarlyna nodded. “They were part of a team that was trying to learn more about the canal station. Whatever the political change was, the results make Tauzn look moderate. This Twenty group either kills people or alters their brains, and they do it on the scale of thousands of people.”

“Do you think they’re telling the truth?”

“The systems help. I can tell that they believe they’re telling the truth, and there is a large and very recent crater in the seabed northwest of the station—in their event-point locale. The water was still boiling.”

“That’s very recent.” Maertyn winced. “I thought Tauzn was cold-blooded.”

“In a hive culture, only the hive as a whole truly matters. Only survival…” Her voice caught for a moment, and she stopped. “Then…it could be that all human societies have more of the hive in them than we’d like to admit.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have to help the hive people and the Vanir. Both of them were well on the way to deciphering some of the station controls. Can you imagine what would happen if this Twenty gained control? Or Tauzn? Or those Aesyr?”

Unfortunately, Maertyn could, but her question raised several others. “Could you help them to operate the station…the Bridge…in their time?”

“From what the Bridge has gathered about the equipment they used, it would take years.”

“Does time really matter?”

“There’s elapsed time. That means it would take years of my time. They also don’t have the right equipment, and I don’t know how effective I would be in trying to explain, even with the help of the systems. There’s also the resonance problem.”

“Resonance problem?” Every time Maertyn thought he understood a bit more, something else came up.

“All the event-points in a universe are linked, some more strongly and directly than others. When similar events occur they resonate across the whole. If I can resolve our problems, those of the Ruche people, and those of the Vanir, while they are still linked, the end result will be better. If it takes more of my elapsed time…then it gets harder, and the Vanir solution won’t have the same effect. Because I’m nearest the one event-point that has the least impact on the resonance, I have more leeway in elapsed time here. If I can help the Ruche people first, before the Vanir…that would be better.”

Maertyn had the feeling that Maarlyna wasn’t telling him everything. “What are you leaving out?”

A brief rueful smile was her first reply. “It’s harder that way, but if I can make it work, things will be easier for you…us.”

“A great deal harder?”

She shrugged, not totally convincingly. “I don’t know how much harder.”

He wasn’t going to get a better answer. From experience, Maertyn knew that. So he asked the other question that had nagged at him. “Why was the station left open? The one at the other end was locked. Is it like this one?”

“They’re the same,” she affirmed. “The records don’t say. The keepers’ memories don’t, either. I think the last keeper might have stepped outside…and died or…Whatever happened, she or he didn’t lock the station.”

“Maybe they knew the only way to find another keeper was to leave it unlocked.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “That’s possible, too.”

“You’ve told me how you’re going to help the Vanir. What about the Ruche people?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why I wanted to talk to you before I promised anything to them.”

Maertyn almost said something about being glad to be of some use, but he bit back the words. “How far will the Bridge reach—outside the now…the event-point, I’d guess, of each time?”

“It can reach a distance of its length from any point along its course—except it’s not actually penetrating the event-points.” Maarlyna smiled, almost ruefully. “That’s something that takes getting used to. The old ‘me’ still doesn’t understand that. The ‘new’ part of me…that’s silly in a way, because everything I’ve learned and felt from all the keepers’ memories is much older—”

“
All
the keepers’ memories? Plural? How many memories are there?”

“It’s all one memory, but the part of each one back is fainter than the one nearer to me. The past few years are clear and sharp, especially since we came to the station. The memories of the Maarlyna I was are hazy, but I can remember most things, I think, even if they don’t always feel real. The previous keeper’s memories are hazier than that…and each one is fainter than the one before. It feels like that, anyway, even if the ones I think of as later take place earlier. That’s why I can’t remember much about the terrible disaster when the ancients actually used the Bridge…there are images of the sky being filled with fire, and massive things falling everywhere…” Maarlyna’s voice faded, and she shuddered. “But the feelings of terror…and desolation…they’re still there.”

Maertyn wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, and he waited.

“Why did you ask about the reach of the Bridge?” she prompted.

“I wondered if the capital city happened to be in reach?”

“Hururia? That’s what they call it.”

“How can you remember all that?”

“I really don’t. The Bridge does, I think.” She paused, then said, “Hururia is…well, it will be…eleven hundred thirteen kays to the northeast of the station.”

“So the Bridge could reach there?”

“Yes. What do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know, not exactly, but I have an idea. You’ll have to talk to them again. We need to know more about the Ruche and how their government is set up, and if there are any symbols that have special significance…things like that…” As he talked, Maertyn couldn’t help but feel that he needed to think about similar issues himself—because the Gaerda outside the station weren’t likely to go away any time soon.

Not now that Tauzn had proof that Maertyn had gained some control over the station, although that control was totally Maarlyna’s.