Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (32 page)

“We don’t have five days,” Ia finished for him.

“Here’s a brilliant idea,” MacInnes offered, catching their attention. “Why don’t we just remind ourselves to put up a big note on the briefing-room wall saying
which
zone we went to, and just have you look at that precognitively, Captain?”

Twisting in his seat, Rico looked up at her, brows raised. “Good thought, MacInnes. I don’t see why it couldn’t work. Captain, care to take a peek?”

Ia held up one hand, thumb and forefinger pinched closely together. “There’s a slight problem with that. I don’t see
one
timeline. I see
all
of them.” Turning back to the starchart, she traced her finger over the screen, electrokinetically drawing a set of lines. “If we go to fight at location yellow, here, then that’s fine and dandy; we all do our jobs right, the main manufactory center gets destroyed, and we go merrily on our way to this green blob here, which will represent our next task in the continuum.

“But if we start at this orange spot here…we all do our jobs right, the main manufactory center gets destroyed, and we go merrily on our way to this green blob here, which will represent our next task in the continuum.” Turning back to the others, she sidestepped the drawing and extended her arm, tapping the yellow and the orange blobs, now connected to the green one by a pair of white lines. “The problem is, I see
both
locations as viable possibilities. At about a fifty percent split, no less.

“This green blob down here, our next task, is actually
two
green blobs, overlapping each other because they’re almost identical in every single way…except one has a sign in the briefing room that says ‘We defeated them at Yellow!’ And the other says ‘We defeated them at Orange!’ I see both, fifty-fifty. Equally valid, equally probable,” she concluded, shrugging. “I need something
more
than a sign that could be posted in either possible reality. Something distinctive enough to tip the balance either way. Even an unusual star formation from the local point of view would give me a clue.”

“Captain, I told you; there’s nothing special about either location,” Xhuge reminded her. “No stellar phenomena, no planets, nothing. They’re both interstitial space, they’re equidistant from ordinary, uninhabited star systems with large amounts of water ice in their Kuiper belts and Oort clouds, and no reason for them not to go to either spot. For all we know, the commander of the manufactory vessel flipped a
coin
to decide where to go.”

“If they had, we could almost have you watch the coin being flipped,” MacInnes joked, folding her arms and leaning her elbows on the table. “Except it’s on a mobile station that gives everyone a raging headache when you get close. Or doesn’t seem to exist, or however that works.”

Al-Aboudwa sighed and slouched back in his chair. “So how are we going to find where our target has gone?”

“The same way I’ve been finding it all along,” Ia said. “Narrow down the search sites—which we have done—and investigate it for blank-space anomalies. Negative proof is still a proof, in a way.”

Lieutenant Rico tapped two of his fingers lightly, thoughtfully on the table. “Captain Ia…you said a few days back that you watch
people
, not things, correct?”

“Correct,” she confirmed. “I could literally enter their life-stream and experience snippets of whatever they experience, if I wanted to.”

“And Private MacInnes sees nouns…” he mused.

“Oh. Oh!” MacInnes said, sitting up with wide eyes. “G’nush-pthaachz Mulkffar-gwish! He’s the requisitioning officer signing most of the orders we found. Maybe you
can
see him flipping a coin?”

Ia gave her a flat stare. Not because the idea was absurd,
but because the way she pronounced Sallhash phonemes was absurd. Ia’s odd sense of humor kicked in, quirking the corner of mouth and brow. “I think I’ve finally found someone with an accent even worse than mine. I don’t have even a tenth of your command of their language, but your accent amuses me. Thank you, Private.”

“The question is, can you take someone else with you into these timestreams?” Rico asked her as the private blushed. “Maybe a clairvoyant? I’m presuming it would have to be a fellow psi.”

“I could take
you
,” Ia countered flippantly. “The closest you get to a psychic ability is your uncanny aptitude for languages…which isn’t a bad idea,” she allowed, thinking it through. “I can get
into
an alien’s life-stream, and hear their thoughts, but I’m not a strong xenopath, and I’m no linguist. The Tlassian and Solarican mind structures are similar to Humans’. K’katta, Choya, less so. Gatsugi is a headache of nuances to sort through. Dlmvla as well. But Salik? They’re cold and brutal, aggressive and cunning. Wading through their life-thoughts is like wading through cold, opaque slime.

“You may not have the mind-set of a Salik, but you know their language, which means you’re closer to understanding their thoughts than I am,” Ia allowed. Stepping closer to MacInnes, she leaned her palms on the back of the other woman’s chair, giving her 1st Platoon lieutenant a frank look from across the table. “But if I take you onto the timeplains, Oslo, you’re no longer a neutral observer. I don’t think the people you report to would be happy about that.”

“Wait a minute,” Xhuge said, glancing between Ia and Rico. “Are you saying the lieutenant’s a spy? We have a spy on board?”

“He’s one of several on board,” Ia corrected. “I know who each and every one of them is, and who they report to—and before you get in a panic, they all report more or less to the Admiral-General in the end, so they’re all internal spies. Some more directly than others.” Shaking her head, she straightened. “I think I’ll just take a solo dip. That way, you don’t compromise your neutrality, and I don’t exhaust myself trying to push two or more people through that anti-psi field.”

“I think I
should
go,” Rico countered. “According to what
I was told, you haven’t shown anyone on the Command Staff what it’s like to be on the timeplains. Now, why is that?”

“Because it would be considered an undue influence upon their decisions,” Ia said. “The same with yours. There
might
even be an accusation of Fatality Thirty-Eight, Bribery, levied at me if I tried to use it to convince my superiors to do as I request because of the fear that I’d show them lottery numbers or stock-market results. I’d rather not kick my career out the nearest airlock.”

“I still think I should,” he asserted. “In fact, I insist, Captain. Bribery doesn’t even come into it because there’s no way in hell I’ll ever play the Salik version of a lottery.”

Ia sighed and rubbed at her brow. She had foreseen this as a possibility. It had the risk of complicating things, but it also had the chance of getting him firmly on her side.
This will be tricky. How to show enough to convince him I’m being honest without showing him so much he either resists or the Admiral-General claims undue influence…or showing so little, he knows I’m holding back. Either way, he’s going to see things he doesn’t know he didn’t want to see. Oh, this’ll be fun…

“There’s an old saying that applies in this instance, Lieutenant,” she warned him. “‘What has been seen cannot be
un
seen.’ You insist a third time, I will take you…but it’ll go on the record as being
your
idea, of your own free will, with no accusations of Fatality Thirty-Eight ever levied my way. And you’ll do so by understanding that a trip onto the timeplains
will
change the way you look at things from here on out.”

“I’m already compromised as a ‘neutral observer’ since you know about me,” he pointed out. “I don’t see how much worse it could get.”

Xhuge winced, and Al-Aboudwa whistled softly. MacInnes shook her head slowly, a pitying look in her eyes.

“Tell me you did
not
just say that, sir?” Al-Aboudwa half joked. “That’s like giving Murphy a wedgie, then asking him if it was good for him, too.”

“
Never
taunt Fate, sir,” MacInnes agreed. “Even a lowly grunt knows that much.”

Xhuge choked, smothering his laughter behind his fist.

Dipping his head ruefully in acknowledgment, Rico murmured, “I’m sure I did just yank up on some devil’s undershorts,
Private…but I still must insist, Captain. Take me onto these ‘timeplains’ of yours. I want to see what you see.”

“Witnessed?” Ia asked the others.

“Witnessed,” MacInnes agreed. Xhuge and Al-Aboudwa nodded, adding their confirmation.

“Alright then. Be it on your head. There are a few rules of engagement, of course,” Ia told them. “Rule number one, no one touches either of us. My gifts can be triggered inadvertently by a touch, so if you have to get my attention, throw something at me from a distance. A datapad, a shoe, even a wrench if you must, so long as it’s something small and nonliving.”

“That would explain Helstead’s comment about throwing boots at you, the other day,” Rico muttered.

“Second rule, Lieutenant,” Ia said, meeting his gaze. “Do not say the word ‘Time’ while we’re on the timeplains. Time is like an entity where we are going because my abilities and my thoughts will literally be shaping whatever you see. You don’t want to sidetrack my thoughts by provoking that entity. It would be like poking a tiger repeatedly. Is that clear?”

“Not really, but if those are your conditions, I will comply,” the tall man admitted. “Anything else?”

“That’ll do.” She tipped her head to her right. “If you’ll move to the far end of the table, I’ll join you there. That way the others won’t be tempted to touch either of us. But they can stay and watch if they want.”

“I’d like to watch, Captain,” MacInnes said, as Rico unfolded his long, large frame from his chair. “I’m not due for my shift on the bridge for another forty minutes. Did you, ah, want me to come along? I know what this Mulkffar-gwish fellow looks like. Would that help?”

“I’m enough of a telepath, I could pick it up from your thoughts first, if you’re willing,” Ia said, stepping back to give the lieutenant room to pass. “I’d rather limit who comes with me onto the timeplains, particularly as we’ll be navigating areas clouded by those damned machines. I’m strong, but I have my limits.”

“I’m willing, sir.” Squaring her shoulders, MacInnes focused her gaze on her workstation screen for a long moment, then nodded. “I’ve got him in my mind now.”

Nodding, Ia moved close. A touch of her hand on the private’s wrist was all it took. Part of her gifts threatened to lean
over the other woman’s life-stream a little too far; Ia reined in the impulse to dive in, and focused instead on her thoughts. The image of a yellow-skinned, broad-faced, ostrich-legged alien came across clearly, clad in a leather-like tan-and-blue uniform dotted with rank markings and the circle-based language of his kind, listing his name and deployment affiliations.

Carefully withdrawing her hand, Ia clung to that image. “To quote the PsiLeague, ‘What was yours is still yours. I thank you for allowing me this glimpse of your thoughts.’”

“Not a problem, sir. Um…what will
we
see when you do this?” the other woman asked.

“Not much. He might react a little, gasp or widen his eyes,” Ia said, moving carefully down the length of the table. She wasn’t really
seeing
the table, concentrating instead upon the image of the Salik named Mulkffar-nostril-flap-exhale. Gripping the back of the chair next to the dusky-skinned lieutenant, she turned it enough to drop into it, and stretched out her left arm with her palm up on the table. “You might get a headache from this, Lieutenant. Our thoughts will be racing faster on the timeplains than our bodies will be living out here in the real world, like a modified, unshielded race through OTL. Last chance.”

“I’ll take that risk, sir.” Turning his chair to face her, knees almost bumping hers, he stretched out his right arm, covering her palm with his.

Ia curled her fingers over his hand. “Remember, I warned you. Take two slow, deep breaths, and relax.”

“Does that help?” he asked, one brow quirked skeptically.

“Not really,” she joked. “You’re just less likely to choke.”

That was all the warning she gave. Closing her eyes, Ia flipped both of them down and in—and hauled up on her passenger’s mind, pulling him out of his own life-stream before he could drown in the overlapping sensations of a thousand potential possibilities.

“Welcome to the plains,”
Ia stated as she steadied him. Rico blinked and looked around, clinging to her hand with both of his. All around them was a vast, rippling field of gold-and-green grass crisscrossed in a thousand rivulets, all drenched in bright golden sunlight. Nothing but grass, sun, and water as far as the eye could see.

“Where…? Or rather, what is this place?”
he corrected himself, straightening.

“This is how I most often visualize
Time.” The word rippled grass and streams like a harsh wind. It even seemed to roil clouds across the sky for a moment, before the impression faded. Ia let it fade before speaking again.
“But I can change it. Shape it. Intensify it, codify it, itemize it…”

The tall man blinked and frowned.
“I don’t understand. You say you can see all possibilities. What future possibility is
this
from?”

“Most of them. It’s a matter of scale, Lieutenant,”
she said, and gestured at the rivulet of a stream closest to them.
“That’s your life.”
A twist of her thoughts enlarged it until it was a meter deep and wide, large enough to show images flickering in the water. Images from his immediate past.
“I can watch scenes from moments in your existence, past and future. I can even step inside the stream and experience from your own perspective what you’ve already experienced, or will, or might. And I can shrink it down and trace how your life interacts with others’ lives, and how they stain each other in colors of influence.”

She shrunk the streams back down again, then turned his stream blue and a nearby one red, and showed them interacting, staining each stream with hints of purple, one more strongly than the other.