“
Yes, ma
’
am. Then there will be no hope for reviving Solace. At best we
’
ll be left with the planet as it is.
”
Neshobe nodded and stood up again.
“
Time to get back,
”
she said, and starting walking briskly toward the house, not waiting for Parrige to fall into step with her. No point in continuing the conversation further. If the best-case scenario was a Solace no better than the half-dead corpse that now existed—if that was the best they could do, well, then, perhaps there was no point in talking at all.
The engines of the
Dom Pedro IV
throttled down to zero. Marquez checked the system-status boards one last time, then unstrapped himself from the pilot
’
s station. The braking maneuver was done. Marquez hadn
’
t even bothered with more than a first-approximation calculation of what orbit he wanted to achieve. He had simply swung the ship around so the
DP-IV
was traveling stern first, thus aiming the engines through her direction of travel. Then he had fired the engine until the ship was at a dead stop, relative to the planet and the inner system of Solace.
Of course, the ship would be pulled in toward the inner Solacian star system by the star
’
s gravity, and start falling in once again. It would be a leisurely fall, requiring hundreds of years to complete. They would change course again long before then.
In effect, he was allowing the ship to drift for the moment. So far as Marquez was concerned, their present position, course, and heading were not matters of particular import. Later, when they had actually decided where they wanted to go, and how soon they wanted to get there, he would take more care in setting his course.
But there was something else about the ship
’
s flight path tickling at the back of his mind. However she had ended up on her original course, she had been placed on it with almost preternatural precision, aimed for a perfect intercept with Solace. The odds against that happening by chance were remote enough that they might as well be zero.
That was part of why he had done the braking burn in such a slapdash manner. If their situation had been manipulated in some way, it was, he felt it prudent to move the ship off that course in an unplanned, near-random way. He did not wish to appear predicable.
In any event, with the braking burn over, it was time to turn his attention to the other jobs that needed doing. They had a lot of work ahead of them—not all of it particularly pleasant.
Marquez made his way over to the comm officer
’
s station. Koffield was there, slowly and carefully working to disarm the lockouts on the various comm systems. As was the case on every timeshaft ship, the Artlnts that controlled the DP-JV
’
s comm systems, along with the comm units themselves, had been designed and installed by the Chronologic Patrol. They were designed to prevent any infraction of the Patrol
’
s complex laws against unauthorized communication from the future to the past.
The comm units had a well-deserved reputation for being prickly customers, suspicious of any human operator. If, for whatever, reason, the sealed system did not like the situation, or got it into its mind that there was some sort of attempt at illicit communication going on, it was capable of self-destructing—using a built-in explosive powerful enough to destroy the whole ship. Marquez, therefore, had been more than willing to take Koffield up on his offer to dicker with the comm unit.
In theory, the system was designed with enough flexibility to deal with emergencies and unforeseen situations-such as the
DP-IVs
present plight. But the whole system was so heavily encrypted and festooned about with fail-safes and fire walls that Marquez always felt it was something close to a miracle if a ship actually managed to send a message without getting shot down or blown up.
“
How is it going?
”
Marquez asked as he sat down beside Koffield.
“
Reasonably well, for a wonder,
”
Koffield replied.
“
The comm system seems as shocked as we are about how much time has passed. It seems to have had its internal clock zeroed out as well. But once it got a look at the positional data for the Solace system, it was ready to believe. I think it helps a lot that I
’
m a Chronologic Patrol officer. It was a lot more ready to listen to me once it heard a few recognition codes and scanned my retina.
”
“
Is it going to unlock the system for us?
”
Koffield nodded wearily, and yawned.
“
Excuse me,
”
he said.
“
It
’
s been a long, hard day. But I think the comm system will unlock for us. After all, it
’
s programmed to keep us from going into the past and communicating information from the future. It isn
’
t programmed to care if we work it in the other direction. The situation we
’
re in is strange enough that the comm unit suspects it might be a trick of some sort. But I think I
’
ve offered it a compromise it can accept. It
’
s been gaming my offer for the last few minutes, doing decision trees and running down all the permutations. I
’
m not sure how long it will take to work enough scenarios to be satisfied.
”
Marquez raised his eyebrows. He knew perfectly well how long that sort of processing could take. Taken to and past its logical extreme, that sort of open-ended analysis could wind up doing estimates on the time remaining until the heat death of the universe, or projected changes in the statistical distribution of atomic particles throughout the universe. Comm units had a reputation for paranoid thoroughness. They
’
d just have to hope this comm was prepared to be reasonable.
“
What
’
s the deal you offered?
”
he asked.
“
I doubt you
’
ll like it much. The comm system lets us in, but in exchange it wants to do a total, irrevocable lockdown on communication on any time-hack earlier than the present here-now.
”
Marquez frowned. Logically, he had no reason to object. He knew damned well they were never going to be able to return to their own time. It wasn
’
t giving up much to give up the chance to communicate with a past he could not go back to. But interstellar travel was not always absolutely precise. Timeshaft ships often arrived at their destinations a matter of a few days or weeks, or even months, downtime from when they had started. A ship might arrive in its own past, albeit tens or hundreds of light-years away from where it had experienced that past. A ship in that situation was expected to sit tight and wait until time caught up with her before communicating, but was allowed to call for help in an emergency. Koffield wanted to bargain that ability away.
“
I hope you were going to check with me before finalizing that with the comm unit,
”
Marquez said.
“
This is still my ship.
”
“
Yes, I know,
”
Koffield replied, and rubbed his eyes with a weary hand.
“
I was going to. I should have cleared it with you before I made the offer in the first place. I
’
m getting a little punchy.
”
“
We
’
re both tired,
”
Marquez said.
“
It
’
s been a hell of a day for us both.
”
“
It has,
”
Koffield said.
“
Shall I withdraw the offer?
”
Marquez thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“
No,
”
he said.
“
It
’
s a sensible deal. Once I had a chance to think it all through, I probably would have offered the comm unit something like that myself. I suppose I was just a bit thrown by being reminded that we
’
re not going home, not ever. Besides, if you tried to cancel the deal now, you
’
d only make the comm Artlnt even more suspicious.
”
“
All right, then,
”
Koffield said.
“
We
’
ll let it go.
”
He reached for the control panel and entered new commands into the system.
An overhead screen came to life.
Comm unit hereby accepts Admiral Koffield’s bargain,
it read.
Comm unit will fully release control of communications during present period in Solacian system in
exchange for total lockdown of all communications at any time in the local here-now past. Comm unit will initiate this agreement upon confirmation from Admiral Koffield and Captain Marquez.
Koffield looked toward Marquez with a wry smile.
“
It looks like your comm unit wouldn
’
t go along without your okay anyway,
”
he said.
“
So it seems,
”
Marquez replied. Not for the first time, Koffield had put him just a trifle off stride, seemingly without trying, without even being aware of it.
“
So it
’
s all right?
”
Koffield asked.
“
Hmm?
”
Marquez looked up.
“
What? Yes. Comm unit—this is Marquez. I concur.
”
“
This is Koffield. I concur as well.
”
A new message popped up on the screen.
Agreement implemented. No communication will be permitted prior to the present recorded time. Full communications system released for use during present period in Solacian star system.
The comm board
’
s manual controls came to life, and Koffield set to work as Marquez watched him.
The man had a way of moving ahead, moving in, taking over, without ever seeming anything other than quiet, urbane, courteous. It seemed as if the choices he offered were never truly choices at all. At the end of it all, there was never more than just the simple, sensible way forward that he put right in front of you. Somehow, what he wanted was always reasonable, and the options never were.
Did you have to have a personality like that, Marquez wondered, before you were capable of destroying a wormhole and a convoy of ships, a wormhole that was a vital link between a half-wrecked world and the outside universe? Before you could sign a planet
’
s death warrant in defense of something as unsubstantial as that holy of holies, Causality with a capital C?
Koffield double-checked his control settings then nodded to himself, satisfied with his own work.
“
That should get us started,
”
he said.
“
I
’
ve set it to locate and monitor all the public broadcast channels it can find, and record both the raw results and summaries of what it finds. We can leave it running now, and we should have some sort of results by morning.
”
Marquez didn
’
t bother to point out that it was his ship, and he could see how Koffield had set things without being told.
“
Very good,
”
said Felipe Henrique Marquez as he stood up, forcing himself to be civil.
“
Then let
’
s .get a good night
’
s sleep tonight.
”
Koffield stood as well and looked Marquez in the eye. There was something in Koffield
’
s expression that made Marquez feel as if the man could see straight into him and know all that he wished to keep hidden. But Koffield merely smiled.
“
A good night
’
s sleep tonight,
”
he agreed.
“
Things ought to seem a bit more settled tomorrow. We
’
ll try and have a day with no surprises.
”
Marquez chuckled to himself. Koffield cocked his head quizzically, clearly wondering what was funny. But Marquez granted himself the small luxury of not explaining.
No surprises.
If Rear Admiral Anton Koffield could arrange, by sheer force of his quiet, determined personality, for there to be no more surprises—well, on that matter, at least, Admiral Koffield would meet with no resistance at all from Marquez.
Her body was not her own. Someone or something else had grabbed it away from her, torn it from her grasp. Demons were forcing it to leap and whirl, buck and sway, as they danced to hideous music that blared and moaned, screamed and gibbered, all about her.
Norla Chandray, second officer of the
Dom Pedro IV,
woke up halfway through her nightmare—and realized that the nightmare was real.
Long sleep. Cold sleep. Cryosleep. Hibernation. Whatever name you called it by, she had been in it, and she was coming out of it. The trainers at the merchant
’
s academy had warned her, over and over again, that it would be bad, that she would waken with no control over her own body, that she would waken in the midst of something very like an epileptic fit.