The cart withdrew. The arm came back down out of the ceiling, picked it back up, and withdrew. The ceiling port
irised shut.
“
It
’
s gone,
”
Raenau said, in a tone of wonderment and
delight.
“
It
’
s actually gone away.
”
He was, of course, looking toward the screen, and at the big blank space where the old-fashioned red letters had
been for so long. The space on the screen was empty, and on Raenau
’
s pugnacious face was the expression of some
one who had just witnessed a miracle.
“
Is the file there?
”
Koffield asked.
“
Did it decrypt the
file?
”
“
Huh?
”
Raenau said, still all but transfixed by the sight
of the message that wasn
’
t there.
“
The file. Has the Artlnt system released the decrypted
file?
”
Koffield demanded. He was suddenly more alert,
more animated than he had been a moment before.
“
Oh! Yeah. Right.
”
Raenau activated another screen, built into .the top of his desk.
“
It
’
s just coming in. Hell
’
s
bells, that thing must have been coded to the devil and
back if it
’
s taking this long to put it in clear.
”
“
Very good,
”
Koffield said.
“
What it says should match up with the files in here,
”
he said, patting the secured container.
This is it,
Norla told herself. Koffield needed that file to be there first, read first, before he could go further. If Raenau could match the encrypted file that had waited here all this time against the information Koffield delivered now, that would be prima facie evidence of the information
’
s authenticity. No one would ever be able to claim it was planted or faked. Now he was ready. Now Koffield had come tothe end of his long, long road. She could read it all in his face. A century late, perhaps, but now, at last, he was about to fulfill his self-appointed mission.
Koffield lifted the secured container up onto Raenau
’
s desk, moving eagerly, hurriedly, nearly knocking over the ashtray that held his forgotten cigar.
“
The data in this secured container here will match what
’
s in your file,
”
he said.
“
Each will help prove the other is authentic.
”
“
Hey! Careful you don
’
t scratch my desk with that thing,
”
Raenau warned, getting up out of his chair.
We’re here to warn about the end of the world, and he’s worried about his desktop.
Norla found that she had to fight back a half-hysterical giggle.
“
Your desk is perfectly safe, Commander,
”
Koffield said with something close to sharp impatience.
“
It
’
s your
planet
that is in danger. You need to examine the information in the file you have just decrypted, and the information I have in this container.
”
“
Now wait a minute—
”
“
There is a two-page summary at the start of my message brought to you by the
Chrononaut VI.
Read it.
”
“
I have got better things to do than—
”
“
My rank might be a hundred years out of date, but I am your superior officer.
Read it.
Now!
”
Raenau stared at Koffield, and time froze for the space of a dozen heartbeats. Then, slowly, Raenau sat back down, stubbed his cigar out in the ashtray, and brought up the file on the display built into his desk. Norla watched him intently. It wasn
’
t far from her mind that there were any number of ways for him to pull a stunt, to push a panic button and have armed guards drop out of the ceiling. But he did not. He sat, and he read, the glow of the display screen softly illuminating his expressionless face.
The room was silent, utterly still. Norla found herself holding her breath without knowing why. She forced herself to start breathing again. She stared at the station commander
’
s face.
But Raenau was giving very little away. He frowned at one point and seemed to look back at something earlier on in the text before going forward.
At last he finished and shut off the screen. He sat there for perhaps half a minute, frowning down at the blank top of his desk. At last he spoke, still staring down at nothing at all.
“
My first instinct is to throw you both out of my office and have you locked away as a pair of lunatics,
”
he said.
“
Your summary, Admiral Koffield, reads like a carefully reasoned, thoughtfully worked-out, hundred-year-old list of paranoid delusions and apocalyptic claptrap. I
’
m very much surprised Pulvrick took it seriously at all.
”
He let out a weary sigh, then looked up at them.
“
Trouble is, everything predicted in your summary has come true. That makes it harder for me to think you
’
re crazy. Not impossible. Just harder.
”
“
Let me make it harder still,
”
Koffield said.
“
Open this secured container, and then the case inside it. First detach the longwatch camera, and aim it so it can see what you
’
re doing.
”
“
This is what you do to help prove you
aren’t
crazy?
”
Raenau asked. He glared at the impassive Koffield for a second, then shrugged.
“
All right. I
’
ll go along with the gag. Quickest way to get this over with is to get this thing open and you out of here.
”
He looked down at the secured container, saw how the longwatch camera was fastened, and removed it. He set it down on the opposite side of his desk so it would have a clear view of the proceedings, then turned his attention back to the secured container.
“
So how
’
s this thing work? Not quite like what we
’
ve got these days.
”
“
It
’
s an open-once system,
”
Koffield said.
“
Opening the main latches destroys the locking mechanism, so it can
’
t be resealed. I believe there
’
s a printed label by the latches, with instructions there.
”
“
Ah, where—oh, okay, there it is.
”
Raenau read over the instructions, then opened the seals and the latches, one by one. The container came open. He swung the lid open and revealed Koffield
’
s personal pack, his Chronologic-Patrol-issue travel case. Raenau lifted it out, set it down on his desk, then took the now-empty secured container off his desk and put it on the floor. Norla could not help wondering if Raenau simply wanted more room to work, or if he was still concerned about marring the surface of his precious desk.
Koffield was visibly restraining himself, holding back from grabbing the travel case and opening it himself. But it would make infinitely more sense for Raenau to do the job. Koffield had done so much already to avoid any chance for trickery that it would be foolish to invent chances now. So long as he did not touch the travel case, there was no way anyone could ever invent a story about Koffield using some sort of sleight of hand to plant a newly written
“
prediction
”
of what had happened in the last hundred and twenty-seven years.
“
Go ahead,
”
Koffield said, his voice eager, his eyes bright,
“
Open it. Open it.
”
Norla stared at Anton Koffield, and for once the man was understandable. She could read his thoughts and feelings as clearly as if they were up on Raenau
’
s display screen. It was the moment he had worked toward all along. Once his report was delivered to a high local official, and in such a way that no one could ever charge fraud, then the worst of the battle would be over.
“
All right, all right,
”
Raenau said.
“
I
’
m opening it.
”
He broke the sealers on the personal pack, undid the latches, swung open the lid, and stared down at the contents.
The room was deathly silent for a time that could have been a single moment or a lifetime.
“
Is this some kind of joke?
”
Raenau demanded.
“
Because I
’
ve got a station in crisis here. I
’
ve got no goddamned time for jokes and games.
”
Norla could see the age-faded, rust-stained interior
padding in the case, and the carefully carved-out niches in
the padding that had been meant to hold books and data-
blocks.
But there were no datablocks, no books. Nothing but a
melted, compressed-together, crumbly lump of ancient waste plastic and corroded scrap metal, no doubt put in
the case to mimic the weight of the things taken out.
The report, the data files, the warning were gone, as lost as all the tens of thousands of yesterdays that had died since Anton Koffield had last closed his travel case.
Norla Chandray wandered the corridors of the Gondola, not knowing or caring where she went, so long as she did not return to her quarters. Her room was a tiny box of a place, but that was not the problem. She had lived half her life in space, in ships with all manner of small compartments. Small spaces did not bother her.
Her room had a massive wall-of-glass window that looked out on the stomach-turning gyrations of the universe spiraling past the station, but even that was not a problem. A space pilot had to be accustomed to disorienting views. Besides, she could always set the windows to maximum opacity and close the blinds that had so obviously been installed after the room was built, when it was discovered that the view drove too many visitors to distraction.
It was the sounds she could hear, and the sounds she might hear, that drove her away. Her quarters shared an obviously unsoundproofed wall with the next room over, where they had put Koffield. She had been with a shattered man when they left Raenau
’
s office. Numb, lost, ruined.
It had been the quest, the crusade, the self-imposed mission that had propped him up and kept him going. It had kept him pushing forward in spite of all, and now it was gone. The task and duty that had been wrapped up into the center of his being had been reduced to nothing more than a crude practical joke, a travel case emptied out and weighted down for the amusement of some cruel and faceless stranger light-years away and a century in the past.She had watched him stumble into his own room, plainly unaware of where he was or what was happening. She had gone into her own tiny room and looked out at the ships and stars wheeling past the darkness. And then she had heard the bumps, the thuds, from next door.
Maybe he was just been being a bit awkward opening up the fold-down furniture. Maybe he had tripped over something, or just slammed the bed open and then flung himself down on it a bit too hard, thrown off by the variable gravity.
Or maybe it had been the first sounds made by a man going to pieces. Maybe next would come cries of anguish, curses, shouts, sobs, or, even worse, a brooding, empty silence onto which Norla could write anything she wished. Would silence mean a man staring out into the infinity beyond the glass wall, contemplating his own doom, and perhaps the means of causing it to happen? Or would it mean Koffield was sitting down to work out a new plan, or write his report again? Or would it simply mean he had fallen asleep?
She did not want to know. Whatever sound or silence she heard from that room would be, at least to her, the most profound invasion of Koffield
’
s privacy, and Koffield was the most private man she had ever met. Whatever torments he was feeling, he had no need for an audience, and she had no desire to be one.
And so, she had left. Now she wandered the glittering maze of corridors, the grand esplanades, the overdone public spaces of the Gondola, alone with her own losses, her own deprivations. This was not her world, or her time. All she had ever had, or had ever known, or ever done, and all the places she had ever been, were as lost to her as Koffield
’
s precious report, drowned long ago in the ocean of years.
She felt herself adrift in that same ocean, and there was no safe harbor anywhere in sight. She felt half-drowned in time, adrift in the wrong world, the wrong lifetime, with no hope of rescue.