Secret of the Legion (28 page)

"That's crazy."

"It sounds crazy, but it's not. We're not sure how it works, because nobody's ever gone back in time. But we know it can be done. And we know you can't change whatever has already happened. You can't change the past. And that's the same thing as saying you can't change the present. But you can shape the present, and the future, by shaping the past. The future hasn't happened yet, so there's nothing to change. But you can create it. The future is an open book. The future is completely fluid. Tomorrow is anything we want to make it. Tomorrow is ours!" His eyes were almost glowing. Six Seven was just as far out as Tara. I could see that now.

"Wait a frac. Just a frac," I said. "You're saying you can go into the past, but you can only change the future."

"I didn't say that. I said you can't change the past, or the present. You can shape the past, you can contribute to the past, you can fulfill the past, so it results in the present situation."

"Why should anybody want to do that? It's already been done! We're here."

"It's not a matter of wanting or not wanting. What happened, happened. Fact: Tara makes it here. Why? Unknown. Possibly it's only because, at some point in the future, you learn about that groundcar and take steps to save her."

"And what if I don't?"

"But you do. Or somebody does. Otherwise she wouldn't be here. Assuming the premise is true."

"That's crazy."

"Yes. Crazy but true. You see…we're just starting to understand the practical consequences of time travel. We're certain that past events can be manipulated—or shaped—to produce specific developments in the future. Obviously, this capability could be an extremely powerful weapon, for whoever controls it. That's why the LC is putting all its resources into this ship."

"I see."

"So the message is…you can shape the future, but you can't alter the past. And anything you're going to do in the past has already been done, as we sit here discussing it. We may not know about it, but if a time hop was successful, or is to be successful, it's been done."

"Think about it, Wester," Tara said. And they left me. The sunset was gone. It was dark—a crisp clear night under a starry sky. I didn't understand it at first. Shape the future? Why would anyone want to go into the past to shape the future? Anyone can shape the future, starting from today. Why go into the past?

***

VIEW: MTR 3874 GAL INFO CAFETERIA EXT 318 02 04 0233 UNCLAS.

It was past 0230 hours, a still, clear night, when Tara came striding out of the dark toward the massive, shadowy bulk of the cafeteria bloc. It was cold and she was wearing a thick coldcoat over pajama pants and ship boots. Her hair was untidy and she was muttering under her breath. There was a little pool of light by the main entrance. Two figures stood there, hands in their pockets.

"This better be good, Lock," Tara said grimly as she neared them. Dr. Lock flashed her a brilliant grin, snapped his head to one side, then snapped it back. The security guard stood there, seemingly amused.

"He's finally flipped out," Dr. Lock said, still grinning.

"I hate it when you use that psych jargon," Tara replied. "Where is he?"

"He's in the cafeteria. Kind of tearing it apart. Isn't that right, Eight Four?"

"He's disassembling things," the guard said. "I can't figure out exactly what he's doing. He wasn't too communicative."

"I would have approached him, Tara, but I thought…well, you're a lot closer to him than I am. I thought he'd react more positively to you than to me."

"You thought he'd be less likely to disassemble me."

"Well, there's that, too." He grinned again. "Eight Four has got a vac gun, if he gets out of line. Want us to accompany you?"

"No, that's all right. Just stay here. I'll see what's troubling him."

"I like your outfit."

"Shut down!"

***

I had barely gotten started when Tara showed up in the galley. I was pretty much lost in dreams already, the steam from the hot water rising up all around me, my hands tingling and turning red, the dishes sparkling, hissing, almost smoking. I already had a nice collection on a rack off to one side. I put a freshly washed dish on the rack and picked up another from the bubbling sink. I slapped the scrub sponge on to it and wiped it clean under the faucet, taking my time. My whole body was warm, and my eyes were heavy. The idea was to sleep while you worked.

"Wester? What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing, Tara?" I replied impatiently. "I'm washing the dishes."

"But there's no need to wash these dishes, Wester. It's a fully automated system. The dishes wash themselves."

"It's not a good system, Tara. If you ate in the cafeteria more, you'd know that. If you want dishes to be really clean, you have to hand-wash them."

"What have you done to the dishwashing system?"

"I had to destroy it in order to save the dishes. You should thank me. My dishes are clean. My dishes are sterilized." I put the dish away and took another one. It felt good, but the idea was to think, or maybe not to think, and Tara was not allowing me to do either. "Can you go away, please, Tara? It's nothing personal. I just need a little time alone here."

"What's wrong, Wester? Why are you doing this?"

"I just want to think, Tara. Doing the dishes kind of helps me think. Killing bacteria. You know, a single bacterium can wipe out an entire civilization—if we let it. And a single bacterium can save millions of people from death—if we help it."

"What is it that's troubling you, Wester?"

"I think you know what's troubling me, Tara."

"Why don't you tell me, Wester? Maybe I can help."

"You can't help me, Tara. You're the source of all my troubles, but you can't help me. I've got to decide this one on my own."

"What is it you have to decide?"

"I have to decide to accept the happiness I have found—the only true happiness I've ever known—or to risk it, to risk it all, for what might be. To throw it away, maybe forever, for something that will probably never happen. For a lost dream. For the past, for the dead. Should I risk the living, for the dead? Wouldn't I be a coward, if I abandoned those I love, to fight the Gods? Anybody can fight the Gods and die. Even a coward can do that. But only a hero can stand by those he loves, despite all the obstacles, despite all temptation. Isn't that true?"

"I don't know, Wester. You're right—I can't help you."

"I'll let you know when I've decided, Tara. I don't know what I'm going to decide. What do you think? Am I a hero or a coward?"

"You're not a coward, Wester. We all have hard choices to make in this world. I pray to God you make the right decision, for your sake, and for those you love. I don't know what it is, Wester. I'll pray for you. Just let me know what it is, whatever it is. I'll stand by you, Wester—no matter what."

"Thanks, Tara. Now if you could just leave me alone for awhile? Please? Why don't you go back to sleep."

"Of course, Wester. I will. God bless you."

***

Priestess shrieked in agony, burning alive. I could see her eyes wide in shock through a faceplate suddenly rippling with black bubbles. Her A-suit was burning, flaming like a meteor, melting, spitting off globules of white-hot cenite. Starmass blazed like the heart of a sun, a raging holocaust, a river of destruction, all around us. She reached out both arms for me, flaming metal arms. I was running for her, I almost had her, but a blast of starmass caught her in the chest, blowing her away from me like a fleck of glowing ash. She screamed again as she saw I was not going to reach her.

"Thinker! Thinker! Help me! Help me! Help me!" The starmass overwhelmed us and I could see her no more. She was gone!

I awoke screaming, raging. I leaped out of bed, convulsed, and bounced off the opposite wall, still screaming. Valkyrie twitched on the bed, stunned.

"GOD DAMN YOU!" I put a fist through a wall screen—it popped off the wall and went ricocheting across the room. I yanked a comcenter off the desk and hurled it at the porch. The plex on the sliding door exploded, spraying shards of plastic around the room. I picked up the desk chair, screaming, and pounded it at the desk until the chair was only kindling. I ripped a clothes mod out of the closet and threw it at the wall. It burst open, strewing clothing. "GOD DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU!" I was on my knees, pounding at the carpet with my fists. Valkyrie was off the bed, crying, hysterical, embracing me, trying to calm me down. I pushed her away and swept everything off the desk to the floor, snatching for the phone. The damned thing was still functional. I jabbed at a tab and glared at the little screen, breathing hard, covered with sweat, bleeding from the hands.

"WAKE UP, YOU BITCH!" I shouted. Tara came to life on the screen, blinking. She woke up quickly when she got an eyeful of me. Valkyrie landed beside me, still whimpering.

"Wester! What's wrong?"

"Shut down and listen! You've won! I'll come with you! I'll go on your damned suicide mission. Understand? But there's one condition. One! Do you hear me?"

"I hear you, Wester."

"When your mission is over—assuming we're still alive—we go on my mission. Mine! Do you hear me?"

"I hear you."

"And I'm in command! Not you!"

"You're bleeding, Wester."

"I don't give a good God-damn! I'm in command, do you hear! The second mission is mine! And you do everything you can to insure its success! You follow my orders! We do it or die, do you understand?"

"Please calm down, Wester. We'll discuss this in the morning."

"Calm? Calm? Are you crazy? How can you be so damned calm, when you're proposing to rocket blind into another universe? What are you, some kind of psycho? What does it take to get you excited anyway? A mass murder?" I cut the connection, still raging. "Psycho!" I shouted. "That woman is a psycho!"

"Please calm down, Thinker—please!" Valkyrie embraced me, shattered. I was slick with sweat, shaking with anger. I knew everything now—everything I had to know. It was like being shot in the brain with a diamond bullet. The future was crystal clear. All I had to do now was make it happen.

***

From that day on, I was perfectly calm. It had always been that way in the past for me. Once things were clear, once things were decided, a deadly calm would settle over my soul. It didn't matter what it was we were facing, we could be marching right into Hell, but once it was clear, my blood would turn to icewater and I would be as cold as a biogen.

I didn't know if I was doing the right thing or the wrong thing, but I knew, at last, what I was going to do. There were no more doubts. It didn't matter whether it was right or wrong, I thought, it's what I'm going to do. And all my phantoms were going to live with it. Live, or maybe die. And I was going to live with it, too. Live, or maybe die.

The dreams stopped. It was almost miraculous. It was almost as if she knew there was no need to call out any more. I was coming. We were coming.

I purged my mind of everything except the mission. I thought of nothing else. I lived for nothing else. Tara's mission, and mine. If Tara's mission failed, mine would never get started—we'd all be dead. So Tara's mission must not fail.

I told Valkyrie and Dragon and Redhawk. They were with me. They said it was crazy, but they were with me. It was just like the River of Doom, on Andrion 3. That had been my idea too, and everyone had said it was crazy. But they went. We would all be going on this mission—Tara and Gildron and Whit, Valkyrie and Dragon and Redhawk and I, and a whole lot of other people. Aliens, from U1—that's what we called our universe. And we were bound for the O's universe that we had named Plane Prime. The O's must not have liked it much, because they had been migrating into our universe for hundreds of years—and causing a lot of trouble. We had never known where they had come from—but we knew now.

***

"Isn't this fun?" Tara asked. Her face was blue and her teeth were chattering. We were lying in an icy stream under a massive log that lay across our legs. The water was half ice. It wanted to freeze, but we kept interfering. I couldn't even feel my legs anymore. The stream ran sluggishly along the bottom of a steep, rocky gully. I tried to squeeze some feeling into my bare hands—no luck. I was too tired to even try to get out from under the log. We were taking a little break, but I knew it wouldn't last long.

"What the hell is this?" our tormentor bellowed, appearing suddenly at the top of the embankment. He had gone ahead, of course. That's easy to do when you're not carrying a tree. "Did I tell anybody to go to sleep? Get your fat pussies up and moving, ladies!" He was built like a brick wall, a short, squat Assidic tank, a flat face and fierce slit eyes, a massive chest and arms like an ape, solid muscle and brown as a berry. He always wore shorts and a sleeveless top and today was no exception even though it was below freezing and a light sleet was falling. How the hell did he do it?

I struggled to my feet, shifting the log with great difficulty to one shoulder. Tara was getting up too, and Dragon and Whit and Redhawk and Valkyrie behind us. It was one damned big awkward log, and even with six of us it wasn't easy to maneuver it. We were in camfax fatigues and boots, but had no gloves or hats.

"You're soft, ladies—soft! You're office weenies! Civs! Pussies! Move it! The enemy's on your ass!" We sloshed forward up the stream, breaking ice with every step, the massive log digging into my shoulder painfully. I was on point. I got to see where we were going. I got to break the ice. It wasn't a deep stream, not even knee-high, but it was a bitch, breaking that ice, and my legs were numb.

It had been Tara's idea, of course. She had said it too—we're soft. And we would need to be hard, very hard, where we were going. So here we were, in Basic again, with a brain-damaged Assidic gorilla torturing us and shrieking abuse. I remembered this nonsense from the first time, years ago. In my worst nightmares I had never thought I'd have to do it again.

"Stop!" he bellowed. "Up the bank! They know you're going down the creek! Up the bank and cross-country! Now!" We stopped, weaving there with the tree on our shoulders. He had stopped us at a place where the gully was almost vertical. It looked easier up ahead.