“
Sir?
”
Norla looked at him in surprise.
“
What do you mean, they don
’
t need you? We just got down here. You barely spoke ten minutes.
”
“
Which was probably eight minutes too long. I wasn
’
t getting much out of listening to the other speakers. I could barely understand a word any of them were saying.
”
“
But it
’
s all based on your work,
”
she protested.
“
Which
I
got from Baskaw,
”
Koffield said, looking about the dome
’
s interior with interest. There was a mixed stand of what looked like oak and pine trees a little ways off from the research center. The trees were at least ten meters tall, and clearly taking advantage of Greenhouse
’
s low gravity to get in some extra growth.
Koffield decided he wanted a closer look and started walking toward them at a leisurely pace. He had meant it half as a joke, but his work
was
done, at least for the moment. It was a genuine pleasure to take a little time and admire the trees and the plant life. No question but that they knew how to make them grow, here on Greenhouse.
“
Don
’
t forget that what they
’
re calling my work is all
Baskaw’s
work,
”
he said to Norla.
“
I could follow the basics of what she said on the first try, but it took me endless study to get to where I was really confident and comfortable with her arguments and methodology. And
her
work was from centuries in my past, while these people are from a century in my future. They
’
ve had all that time to refine and improve terraforming techniques. Unusual sort of dome, don
’
t you think? Usually they
’
re all city with a bit of parkland, or all park with one or two maintenance structures. This one is half-and-half.
”
“
If they
’
re all that smart, how is it they never saw what Baskaw saw?
”
Norla demanded.
“
Point taken. True, they missed what Baskaw found, but then so has everyone else in history. She is the only one
ever
to find those relationships and formulae and transformations. Her work is original and unique. DeSilvo found her work in the archives, and then I found it
because he
hid it. That
’
s really all there is to my contribution. It took a genius unique in all of history to create the work, and I
’
m no genius. So why blame the scientists here for being like everyone else?
”
“
Even so, you should go back. They
’
ll need you. They
’
ll come looking for you.
”
“
Oh, perhaps they
’
ll look for me just to be polite, but they certainly don
’
t
need
me. Not anymore. I
’
m just the gatekeeper, the man who found the key to a door that
’
s been locked so long no one even knew it was there anymore. Then I came along and unlocked the door. Once the door
’
s open, who needs the gatekeeper? The best I can do is get out of the way before they trample me in the rush to get through it.
”
Norla did not answer, and the two of them walked along in silence for a time. It was getting on toward evening as they reached the stand of trees. Koffield paused for a moment to look up, through the transparent dome, at one of the strangest skies he had ever seen.
The huge bulk of Comfort loomed directly overhead, right where it always was. Just as Earth
’
s Moon always presented the same face to Earth, so too was Greenhouse tidally locked on Comfort. Comfort was in waning half phase at the moment, the darkened half of its surface blotting out a massive swatch of sky. The SunSpot was just setting in the west.
In the back of Koffield
’
s subconscious, old instincts wanted a setting sun to redden and grow dimmer as it approached the horizon. The presence of trees, of sweet air, of grass under his feet, made the expectation all the stronger. But outside the dome was nothing but the near vacuum that passed for an atmosphere on Greenhouse, and the light of the SunSpot was scarcely dimmed at all by its passage through such insubstantial stuff.
The stars were lost in the SunSpot
’
s glare, but if one turned around and looked in the opposite direction from the orbiting light source, stars, and even other satellites of Comfort, were plainly visible in an all but perfectly black sky. Stranger still, Lodestar, the true sun of this system, happened to be rising in the east just as the SunSpot set. Though the true sun was bright enough to cast a dim shadow, the SunSpot shone far brighter in the sky of Greenhouse.
And yet the SunSpot did not shed any noticeable light on Comfort. SunSpot was orbiting Greenhouse, while Greenhouse was orbiting Comfort. As seen from Greenhouse, the planet was behind the orbiting artificial sun at the moment. Besides, the SunSpot
’
s focusing shield-shell directed virtually all of the SunSpot
’
s light and heat on Greenhouse. SunSpot was quite literally a spotlight, aimed directly at the small world it circled.
The oddity of it all was if anything enhanced by the fact that the strange sky hung over a homey, comfortable, utterly familiar parklike setting. There were trees overhead, and a bed of pine needles and dried leaves and gently decaying humus underfoot. What looked and sounded suspiciously like a particularly arrogant male blue jay perched in a tree just ahead, scolding them loudly, and taking obvious pleasure in his own performance. A grey squirrel scuttled around the trunk of an adjacent tree, and the jay turned the brunt of his invective away from the humans and directed it at the new arrival with every bit as much zest and gusto.
The squirrel climbed his tree to a limb higher than the jay
’
s level, then swarmed out the limb and leapt straight at the tree, and the limb, and the branch, that held the jay. The jay squawked in outrage, jumped off the branch to avoid the squirrel, and flew away, doing more gliding and less flapping than he would have on Earth, thanks to the lower gravity. The squirrel sat up on its haunches and
started cleaning itself with a nonchalance so studied it was hard to believe it was not feigned. The squirrel had won, and the squirrel knew it.
Anton Koffield smiled, and even chuckled to himself, as he watched. He was quite astonished by how good he felt, how relaxed, even, strange to say, how happy he was. It had been so
long
since he had felt himself at ease, with no duty, no responsibility, no mission pushing him forward in directions he would not choose for himself.
Not since the moment, centuries before, back aboard the
Upholder,
when Alaxi Sayad had detected the intruder assault on the
Standfast,
on the downtime end of the Circum Central wormhole, had he truly felt himself this free of claims upon himself. Since then he had twice been marooned in the future, twice lost all connection to the people and events of his world, but always the weight of duty had pressed down upon him.
Even in the days after the
Upholder’s
return from Circum Central and before he met DeSilvo, when he had had little more to do than fill a desk in the Patrol
’
s Grand Library offices, he had felt, not that he did not
have
a duty, but simply that he had no way to carry it out.
He, Koffield, had put on his own shoulders, and no one else
’
s, responsibility for the destruction caused by the fight against the Intruders. He knew in his heart that it had been interference with timeshaft-wormhole travel that had caused that disaster. The Intruders
’
attacks on the future and the past had produced the chaos.
He
knew,
he
understood, even if no one else did, that it was the Intruders who had set it all in motion. But if all that death and loss were to have meaning, then the principles they had died for—defending causality, protecting the future from the past—would have to have value. And there
was
value, enormous value, in those things. But it was hard to devote one
’
s life to a theory, an idea, that was by its very nature a negative, an absence. No paradoxes. A past not interfered with. He had found he needed something more, something nonabstract, something real to work with, rather than merely something theoretical to prevent.
It had been, in large part, Glister that had planted a new duty in his heart. If not for Glister, and his connection to it, he would not have taken up the study of terraform-ing and its failures, certainly not with anything like the sort of zeal he had felt. It was, no doubt, his guilt over Glister that had driven him so hard, made him so determined to prevent a similar collapse at Solace.
But now. Now he had handed off his information to the people best qualified to use it. He had gotten past all the barriers, all the twists of fate and runs of bad luck and acts of downright sabotage, gatekeepers of another sort, that had tried to block the way.
Now he had done his job, and everyone else could do theirs. It had taken him a while, but he had come to realize -that the data stolen from him meant nothing. He did not need the books and datasets that had been replaced by a suitcase weighted down with trash. No one did. The scientists and engineers on Greenhouse were experts in the field of terraforming, with resources, experience, and personnel Koffield did not have. They would be able to redevelop all of Koffield
’
s work, and, more than likely, go beyond it, in a few days or weeks at most.
The blue jay suddenly swooped back into view and buzzed the squirrel, flying in close and fast enough that the squirrel jumped clean off its branch and barely managed to scramble to safety on a neighboring bough.
There was something wonderfully comforting and familiar in the sight of the bird and the squirrel teasing and chasing each other. The same scene had, no doubt, been played out a thousand, a million, a billion times in the past, on Earth.
Familiar.
It was that, and no doubt. And, he realized, familiarity was something that had been bothering him, at the back of his mind, for quite a while now.
He had to laugh at himself. Three minutes ago, he had been congratulating himself on having no more concerns, no more worries, his tasks at an end. It hadn
’
t taken him long to find something new to worry about.
But still, it was a mystery. He had been marooned in the future twice, once for nearly eighty years, and once for over a hundred. And yet, more than two centuries outside his own time, far too much was familiar, understandable, and easy. Or maybe he was seeing too much in too little.
“
Officer Chandray?
”
he began.
“
Yes, Admiral Koffield?
”
she replied, a smile on her lips.
There was just enough of a playful, half-sarcastic tone to her voice to make the message loud and clear. Here they were off duty, mission accomplished, walking in a garden, and he was calling her Officer. It was absurd. They had been through a fair amount together, and might end up going through a lot more. And, after all, the word
familiarity
had more than one meaning.
“
Message received,
”
he said.
“
First names in private, rank and formal address in public?
”
“
Sounds like a fair deal—Admiral. But you go first.
”
“
Very well—Norla.
”
Koffield paused for a moment, surprised at himself. How long had it been since he had been on a first-name basis with—with anyone? How long since he had had anyone he could truly call, not a colleague, or a friendly professional acquaintance, but a
friend?
Even with two centuries of time-stranding figured into it, it had been a frighteningly long time. But his mind was wandering.
“
I wanted to ask you something. You
’
re here from a hundred and twenty-seven years in the past. Doesn
’
t all this
”
—he gestured to indicate not just the domed forest, but all of Greenhouse, all of the Solacian system—
”
seem just a little too
much
like home?
”
“
I
’
m not sure I know what you mean.
”
“
I spent a little over a year in that time, in your time,
”
Koffield said.
“
It never really occurred to me to realize just how little the time shift threw me off. Now I
’
ve made a second jump, twice as far as the first, and
still
I can recognize and understand the world around me. That just doesn
’
t seem right.
”
“
Why should you expect things to change?
”
asked Norla.
Koffield shook his head.
“
You
’
re right. Maybe I shouldn
’
t expect it. But there have been periods in history where two hundred years of history would leave society changed beyond recognition.
”“
And there have been times when the basic technology, and society, have remained mostly static for a long time.
”