FOR A WHILE, nothing happened. Gerloc’s patrols found tracks and traces of one cluster of Giants, and the ConFeds continued to work on their trap. I was splitting my time trying to find weapons and trying to find a better way to track the Frost Giants.
If the Frost Giants descended upon Inequital from Mithrada, I could sense their undertime tracks, but actually breaking into those tracks or breaking out on Query would be blocked to me. Why?
Because, as Wryan explained it to me, according to the Laws of Time, foretiming and backtiming within your home system are not possible.
Had I, as a descendent of Query, been born on Sertis, would my home system have been Query or Sertis? Or would both be blocked to me? My gut reaction was that both systems would be blocked. Otherwise, a race with both interstellar colonies and time-diving abilities could screw up the entire universe. Then again, maybe I didn’t like that idea because it was just the sort of thing that Odin Thor liked to get involved in.
Still, as I pulled on the insulated time-diving uniform—the material represented another theft from some out-system by Kerina—I knew I had to try the chance of backtracking the Frost Giants, if only to find out where they had come from before Odin Thor did. I knew from my earlier attempts that I could see some scenes, even if I could not act. Seeing and following those tracks might give me some hint of their origin.
Wryan had left early, presumably to talk to Odin Thor and try to
keep him from mounting his nuclear attack on the isolated pocket of the Frost Giants that Gerloc had found in the globular cluster out beyond Sertis. I had no love of the Frost Giants or Odin Thor, but I had yet to see anything that a diver could carry that would destroy one of them. Even after my statement at the meeting, no one seemed to understand that. Or they didn’t want to, as Wryan suggested.
After what the Frost Giants had done to Inequital, I wasn’t interested in stirring them up without any way to neutralize them or destroy them.
If I could discover that the Frost Giants were spread across a good chunk of the galaxy, that
might
provide us some breathing room before Odin Thor started another witch-burning crusade, just like those of the Westron past.
So I pulled on the black uniform, the boots, and the equipment belt, including the heaviest gauntlets around, one of the few technological remnants of Ydris. With just one little push, I had shoved the Ydrisians from violence and fighting into such high-tech disaster that they had destroyed each other. While I might have wished otherwise, it had happened, and it would be difficult if not impossible for me to undo it. Besides, sadly, the divers needed the gauntlets for personal survival, and I wasn’t about to go back to the witches of Eastron days, not after my own trials in the damps.
No one else was around in the cottage as I stuffed down a high-energy breakfast. I put some additional food in the thin backpack, mostly hard bread, cheeses and dried fruit and meat. After my first diving experiences, and after my stint in the hospital, I didn’t feel comfortable without carrying some food. Then I sighed … and dived, letting my mind carry me sideways in time to the hilly plains that had been Inequital. While I could neither break out in the foretime or backtime on Query, nor see more than a few years past or future, there was nothing to prevent me from slipping backwards and watching for the tell-tale paths of the Frost Giants … or other timedivers.
As I suspected, near the present there were no traces or tracks, not the slightest “warping” of the time arrows that might indicate the passage of a traveler. Perhaps two or three years in the past the undertime twisted almost violently, so violently that I had to refocus my concentration to remain there. The clutter and distortion were so great, the blue twisting in upon the red and the black and gold interleaving with each other, that I forced myself farther into the red.
Farther backtime meant fewer trails and a chance to find a Frost Giant track discrete enough to trace back to another home planet or base.
That wasn’t what I found.
Backtime of the Frost Giants, clear and thin as a razor, I found a
time-line edged with crimson and vibrating with pain. Not that it was obvious, or that anyone else would have sensed the pain, because I’ve had Wryan ask about it. No one else can see more than a blur through the undertime, and no one else can sense strong emotions through the undertime. Wryan always thought it was funny that I have no empathy sense except through the time walls.
In this case, the pain was there. I almost missed it, and I had to have missed it before. But I was getting more sensitive with experience, and I was looking for that sort of thing. It wasn’t really a backtime line, but a crosstime line, running from somewhere west of Inequital to Inequital itself, and then further to the east. Toward Esterly—or Bremarlyn. Maybe farther.
My blood was as cold as if a Frost Giant had appeared before me, and, even in the suspension of the undertime I felt like my heart was racing. Mentally, I took a deep breath. Mentally, because you have no physical abilities in the undertime. Everything is suspended—itches, elation, pain.
That was why my mind wanted to make my body shudder. If that trail represented what I feared …
Taking a mental hold of myself, I did my best to mark the timing and place of that crimson line. Then I dived back to the cottage.
No one was there.
I ate a chyst, and paced from the workroom to the kitchen area and back again. I went outside and looked around. The overcast looked like it was building to a storm that matched what was building inside me. I could almost see my breath steaming, and I shivered, but not from the cold.
Serla looked through the shutters from next door, but she must have seen my face, because she disappeared.
I walked back inside and cut some stale brown bread and two slices of yellow cheese. Tough chewing, but it gave me something to do.
Wishing Wryan were back, I paced back down to the workroom and looked at the new duplicator and the original of the Ydrisian handgun, the one that had led to my manipulations of Ydris, and set the change-winds howling down the corridors of time. Most of the butt and the area under the barrel were taken up by energy cells.
A thought occurred to me, and, while I waited, I jotted it down on the tablet by the bench.
“Time-diving energy flows. Diverted to energy cells for weapon power?”
After all, if the power inherent in time flows could be tapped for weapons, the whole problem of energy storage would be minimized.
Even if—I dropped the thought. Either it could be done or it couldn’t.
I wished Wryan would appear, but I still didn’t want to show my face down at the Marine camp. In Odin Thor’s current mood, there was always the chance for some sort of “accident” to happen to me. He thought he still needed Wryan, but he had no use for me, now that he had the duplicator, the gauntlets, and the closet-sized fusion plant.
From the cluttered workroom I walked back to the kitchen and ate a pearapple. I looked out the window again. The thunderheads were building up to the south, and the sky was turning a purpled black.
A single jagged lightning bolt flared in the distance.
Tempted to eat something else, I deferred, mainly because my guts were feeling heavy. I still wanted to bite things, chew them. I kept pacing.
Heavy cold raindrops were striking the roof and the cottage walls and windows.
I could feel the undertime tension and turned to face the open space in the middle of the kitchen where Wryan would appear. She was wearing a black diving suit.
“I don’t know which storm’s worse—the one outside or the one inside,” commented Wryan after taking a quick look at my face.
“Inside, this time. I need your opinion. Hold my hand and dive with me. Inequital, just before the Frost Giant attack.”
“It wasn’t exactly an attack, Sammis.”
“This isn’t about the attack …”
She looked at my face and asked, “Can I get something to eat? Will it wait that long?”
I didn’t want to wait. I’d waited all morning, it seemed, but she looked pale, and, besides, who knew where the dive would lead? I nodded. “Anything special?”
“Just fix me some tea.”
So I turned on the burner to heat the water, while she rummaged through the cooler. Then I nibbled another corner of the hard yellow cheese.
“What is it?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure, but I have a feeling that it’s not at all good.”
“Is it the Frost Giants or Odin Thor?” She was fitting together a combination of sliced meats, greens, and cheese too thick to be properly called a sandwich.
“Something else. Very different.”
“You are upset. Just let me finish. Sit down and stop pacing. I don’t need indigestion, too.”
Perching on the edge of the chair, I watched her. Even eating that monstrous sandwich, she looked graceful. When she picked up the heavy tea mug, she could have been handling the imperial china. Yet those slender hands were as strong as mine and a lot more skilled. She’d been a medical doctor before she’d gone into the time-diving research and probably had several careers before that, although I had never had the nerve to ask her about them. She made me feel so young, so hell-fired inexperienced, at times.
I reached for the cheese.
“Are you really that hungry?” Her eyes were smiling, but caring, too, at the same time.
“No. Nervous.”
“I know. I’ll be ready in a minute, but I haven’t had anything to eat since dawn. Trying to explain Frost Giant migration patterns takes a lot of effort when Odin Thor doesn’t really want to hear. But he finally got the point.”
“Which was?”
“Migration patterns, by themselves, mean that there are probably many more Frost Giants lurking around and that it isn’t wise to act until you know exactly how many. That’s because they react to temporal and energy disruptions. Destroying Frost Giants will create both.” She took a last bite of the sandwich, chewing it thoroughly, unlike me.
“How long will he wait?”
“Maybe ten days … unless we can find several other clusters of Giants.”
“You know—”
“I know. You can’t find weapons and track Frost Giants simultaneously. And you’re the only one who can see clearly enough from the undertime.”
“You can …”
“Not quite as well, and, besides, we agreed not to let him know that.”
I shook my head. Concealing things from Odin Thor was always a two-edged sword.
“I’m about ready. Will I need anything special?”
“A medical kit … maybe … But I think it’s too late … was too late a long time ago.”
“Is this an off-system, back-time injury case?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Just a moment.” She left the kitchen.
I waited, but before I had a chance to grab another chunk of cheese she was back, strapping a small case to her equipment belt.
“And stay away from the cheese.”
I shrugged, flushing slightly in spite of myself. “Then let’s go.” I extended my hand.
“Wait.” Both her arms went around me, and she pulled us together, holding me tight, and somehow warming part of the chill inside me. “I know … I know …”
She knew me all right, too well, but she was also right, and I stood there and hung onto her, while her fingers crept up my back and kneaded away some of the tightness in my shoulders. After a time, she lifted her head from my shoulder and brushed my lips with hers. “All right?”
“Yes. Much better.” I tried to smile, but took a deep breath instead.
Then we held hands and slipped undertime, crosstime toward Inequital. The thin crimson dive-line was still there, like a slash of blood at right angles to the Frost Giant tracks.
Perhaps Wryan tensed as I guided us along that line. I felt she did, but since our physical condition remained exactly the same as when we entered the undertime, any tension had to be strictly mental.
What I did not understand about the crosstime track was its intensity. All tracks faded over subjective time. At least all those I had run across did. Time-diving is a subjective mental feat. Only entry and breakout actually have an objective reality.
So why was this track so unfaded? I thought I knew, and I was scared.
All I could do was try to match our dive with that of the crimson track, trying to trace it to the end.
Reaching the end of the track was not that difficult, except that the diver had never broken out back into the now. The crosstime slide ran from somewhere west of Inequital through Bremarlyn and into Eastron … and stopped, as if the diver were suspended.
In peering into that backtime view of Query, I could only see a hazy view of the “then,” a view of a cave of some sort, high in the Bardwalls, a cave filled with old-fashioned cabinetry and wardrobes and other objects I could not make out. Certainly, more than a cave.