Someone was more than bending the rules, and so would I. I slid back undertime to the beach below. I didn’t exactly break out, not all the way, anyway, but I did manage to get a good chunk of rock, shuttled back undertime to point nine, and studied the chamber.
By wandering around the limp flag and straining to pierce the uncertainty that separates the “now” from the undertime, I could see a vector arrow sheet attached to the rock wall behind the staff.
Still skeptical, I mentally let go of the rock, and, since mind controls matter, it dropped into the chamber. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then a greenish light filled the other side of time, the “now,” pervading the space in the rock.
Gas! If it were a test of capabilities, nothing fatal would be employed, only something painful or humiliating.
While the gas swirled around and clouded the chamber, I decided, foolishly, to flash-slide by the vector arrow and get a peek at the directions. I made one pass, far less than a unit in real-time, and managed
to absorb the direction and approximate distance. The almost instantaneous slide still left my face stinging.
That’s a disadvantage of time-diving. You’re left suspended with whatever hurts until you break out. True of pleasure as well, which leads to some interesting permutations, I’d been told, but that was trainee gossip.
Point ten took a while to pin down—or up—subjectively, that is. The directions were confusing, but damned if I was going back for a second look and more gas burns.
That last point, once found, was simple enough. Locating it was what took the subjective time. The vector arrow had indicated an incredibly long, virtually vertical direction arrow. If the scale was correct, and I had no reason to disbelieve it, my last point had to be well above Query’s surface.
Figuratively, I scratched my head over that conclusion, but decided to follow the vector arrow to the end.
In the dark above Query, I located an orbiting structure. Through the silver haze that divided the undertime from the objective “now,” I could sense that the space station, if that was what it was, had been there for eons, if not longer. The outer spokes of the wheel were gouged and pitted, and one of the arms was holed through.
Guessing that a recovery point and the tenth flag would have to be in the hub, I wandered around in the undertime. The space chill seemed to seep into the undertime. Temperature changes weren’t supposed to penetrate beneath the now, not according to what I’d gathered from my sneaky looks into the texts of the advanced time theory course. Our group wasn’t scheduled for that until the final half-year.
Groping around half-blind in both the space darkness and the hazed undertime, the subjective time dragged out before I pinned down the elusive tenth flag in a small compartment with heavy metal doors at each end.
I hesitated. All I needed was a momentary appearance, and an envelope with my name on it. Yet every other spot had been trapped. By then, of course, the gas burns were getting to me. Subjective feelings, because the intensity was constant. I just wanted to get the test over with.
I knew whoever set the course was playing on my impatience, and I was tempted to sit up there in orbit for what seemed subjective hours until I figured out the latest catch.
Could it be the orbit itself? Was the chamber airless, and designed to catch me taking a deep breath of vacuum? Was some other equipment focused on the arrival point?
I snooped around as well as I could, discerned no equipment, could sense no energy concentration. Sometimes you can really feel them in the undertime because high energy does have the tendency to warp time itself.
Finally, I decided it had to be the location and the airlessness which were the tests. I made a flash-through appearance, just long enough to grab the envelope and to register if anyone had left any device to record my presence. The cold started to freeze my face, on top of the burning from the green gas, and I continued to seethe while I slid back down to the beach where it had all started. Breakout was welcome as the effects of gas and chill began to dissipate.
Sammis was waiting, sitting on the sand with his head in his hands and his knees drawn up, a morose look on his elvish face.
Some of my pent-up anger lessened on seeing him in that unguarded position, also strengthening my suspicion that he had not been the sole architect of the test course.
“Sammis,” I said, my good resolves to keep my mouth shut evaporating rapidly, “here’s your damned envelope.” I practically threw it at him. He caught it automatically.
“Who the hell designed your little course?” I snapped.
He scrambled to his feet. I had the feeling I wasn’t supposed to be back yet.
“Are you all right? How far …” He stopped and looked at the envelope. “You got through all ten?”
“I think so. At least if that airless hulk of a space station happened to be number ten, I got through all ten.”
He made me recite all of them, and I did, rather impatiently. “Look,” I said sharply as I finished responding to his grilling, “if I said I did all ten, I did all ten. I’m not about to lie to anyone about it. Damned if I’ll lower myself by lying.”
“What?” he asked. He paled slightly, I think.
Abruptly, I realized that I was still a trainee, and a fairly junior one at that. “I’m a little upset.”
“I can understand that, Loki.”
He still hadn’t answered my question. I tried once more. “Sammis, who designed that course?”
“The final responsibility for evaluating the attitude adjustment skills of his trainees rests with the instructor.”
That, or some variation, was all he said. I knew someone else was involved.
I just didn’t know who.
THERE’S A HELL of a lot to Temporal Guard training. Advanced work is practically always conducted on a one-on-one basis. It has to be. Abilities vary so greatly from individual Guard to individual Guard that a standardized program would fail. Many of the older Guards themselves can only handle two-way dives to well-charted or nearby localities, such as Sertis. They couldn’t have helped me much, although I suppose they were fine for someone like Ferrin.
Freyda was usually my field diving instructor. She wasn’t as good as I was even then, but she was well acquainted with the impetuousness I displayed, and acted as a brake on my lack of caution. Freyda was nothing if not cautious.
She was so cautious that I was stunned to find out through casual gossip that she’d spent several years living with my grandfather Ragnorak before he had disappeared on a long-line, backtime dive.
Later, it made a bit more sense, when my own experience and the talk of others confirmed that the Counselor was cautious in every area but one. On Guard matters, however, she was all business and didn’t hesitate in using whoever or whatever was best for the Guard.
“You’re going to Sinopol with Baldur. That’s for Procurement, and you’ll need a complete cosmetic,” Freyda announced one morning as I entered the training rooms.
“Sinopol?” I’d never heard of the place.
“Hunters of Faffnir, high-tech, about a million back. You need to get a briefing from Assignments and a full language implant. I mean
full
, with complete fluency. Then report to Cosmetics. You two leave tomorrow.”
“Supplies?” I ventured.
“Power systems. Baldur will fill you in.”
“No weapons from the Hunters of Faffnir?” I was pumping and decided they sounded like a war-oriented bunch.
“The culture’s based on hand-powered weapons, personal combat—or massive destruction. There’s not much in the way of economical weapons we don’t already have. You’re going as a bodyguard for Baldur and because he needs a high-powered diver to bring the generator back.”
“We have generators,” I ventured.
“This is better—much better, according to Baldur—and we’re about to lose the opportunity to obtain it. Now … you need to get moving.”
I got the picture. I was the porter for the heavy technological gadgets. Could be interesting even for a coolie. I buttoned my lip and marched over to Assignments, where Heimdall motioned me to an end console with a single abrupt gesture.
After I had the briefing tapes firmly in mind, Hemmed shoved me out the archway toward Linguistics. There I was laid out under the Gubserian language tank to absorb a complete dosage of Faffnirian.
The language tank is an experience in itself. When I tottered to my feet after an afternoon of high-speed implantation, I muttered my thanks in gibberish, gibberish to almost anyone in the Tower. It would have meant “Thank you … I think” to a Hunter of Faffnir.
Recalling the elaborate Code Duello of the Hunters, I belatedly realized that the doubt in my voice would have earned an immediate challenge from any full-fledged Hunter in Sinopol, but the young Guard tech, Ordonna, just smiled. She was used to the disorientation.
Although it was late by the time I reached Cosmetics, and I had hoped everyone had disappeared … no such luck. Two Guards were waiting. They slathered me with something over every pore of my body, popped me into a conditioner, pulled me out thirty units later, and shoved me in front of a mirror. I had dark brown skin. After covering my hair with another kind of gunk, they stuffed my head under some other electronic gadgetry. I came out with black hair so dark it had that incredible tinge of blue.
“You can either come back after you’re done, and we’ll reverse the changes, or wait. The bonding will break down in a couple of ten-days,” the head cosmetician noted. “If you’re on a long-term assignment, be back here for renewal in twelve days subjective. Good luck.”
I trudged to the East Portal of the Tower and slid straight to my rooms in the West Barracks. I collapsed on my couch, barely remembering to set the wake-up for the next morning.
Baldur was waiting for me at the Travel Hall. “What did they tell you?”
“Standard briefing.”
The big blond Guard—except now he was big and dark, like me—shook his head. “How’s your hand-to-hand? Are you any good with a knife?”
“Nix on the knife. All right on the hand-to-hand.” I was being modest. I was good on the hand-to-hand, partly because I cheat. I can’t explain the mechanics, but I use my diving/sliding ability to speed up my reactions and motions. Never met another diver who could the way I can. Sammis could anticipate, and he was the best I knew.
“I hope you’re better than that. The odds are a hundred percent that you’ll have to fight at least once on this trip.”
Such a comment seemed strange coming from Baldur, the gentle giant. He was really more of an engineer than a Guard.
“I’ll do all right.”
He pulled me over into a corner. “Loki, I’ve heard that you’re the hottest Guard since Ragnorak or before. I’ve also heard that you forget to listen. Listen, please, and save both of us some trouble …”
He was off and running about the fantastic technology of the Hunters of Faffnir, their ultra-courteous social structure, and their nasty habit of challenging each other to fights on the slightest pretext. I tuned it out because I’d already gotten it from the briefing tapes.
Baldur meant well, but he went on and on.
Suddenly, he wasn’t talking.
“Loki … I give up. You know it all. I hope you don’t have to pay for it like Mimris did. Are you ready?”
“Sure.” Who was Mimris? I wanted to know, but after that sermon I wasn’t about to ask.
“We’re sliding to the objective-now site of Sinopol before diving straight back. I’ll need a breather in between. As it is, I can barely reach High Sinopol. That’s one of the reasons for the trip and your presence.” Baldur grimaced and brushed his long blue-black hair out of his eyes. Usually it was white-blond.
I knew I was diving along as a glorified porter, but why the rush?
After a million years, someone decided we needed a new type of generator? Heimdall and Freyda hadn’t said a word, just pushed the buttons and sent me off. Baldur was bluntly admitting this dive was almost beyond him.
I looked at Baldur again, as if he were a different man.
“Beginning to wonder, aren’t you?” He smiled wryly. “I should have started with our politics. Remember, we’re a totally parasitic society. We’re moving into a time-phase where the average diver can’t reach many high-tech cultures. The Guard is reluctant to meddle and create artificially spurred high-tech systems. In the meantime, Terra and possibly Wieren may develop into high-tech cultures. Predicting is chancy, especially when our own lights could go out if we’re wrong.”
“What lights?” Baldur’s words made sense, but not too much.
“Loki, can you build a generator, make a glowbulb, even forge a knife?”
“No. Can you?”
“As a matter of fact I can. But I spent four years on Sertis learning how to, and a couple more on Wieren. As far as I know, I’m the only one on Query who can build anything from scratch, or from raw metal. That’s the point. We beg, borrow, and steal.”
“We don’t need to build that much. We have the duplicator.”
“We stole that too, back at the very beginning.” Baldur cut off the philosophy with a smile. “I’d rather not have to go to Sinopol. It’s at the fringe of my ability. We need a certain compact generator, and you’re about the only one who can lug that much metal a million years. So we’re going. Please keep your lip sealed and act insignificant.”
“But why do we need it?”
Baldur signed. “I just told you. We can’t make technology. I can duplicate it and understand it, but not create it. It took me a long time to find this, but I can’t lug it back myself.”
I nodded. What else could I do? Baldur had spent a long time searching for this generator, and didn’t want to lose it. Perhaps he was overdramatizing, but who was I to dispute it? He’d convinced the Counselors and the Tribunes. Besides, I liked the thought of being indispensable.
“We’ll break out in a small room I rented on a long contract. Then we’ll round up enough of the local exchange to pay for the generator, pick it up, and return to the Travel Hall.”
“Why do we even have to pay for it?”
“You’ll see. Perhaps you could steal it. I can’t.” Baldur shook his head. “Hopefully, you’ll return to regular training a little better equipped to understand than before.”
I nodded politely again.
We walked over to the Travel Hall and suited up with outfits that Baldur had obviously brought back on a previous dive.
I dressed. Someone had taken the time and care to tailor the gear for me, and I wondered who. Then again, the way it stretched, it might adjust to a wide range of body sizes. Basically, the Hunters wore black bodymesh suits that covered everything but hands, feet, throat, and head. The material was a flexible synthetic patterned in octagons. I tried to nick the stuff with the razor knife that was part of the equipment and couldn’t even peel a sliver from it.
The mesh octagons were small and closely spaced over vital areas, but there were some oddities. Like the right side of the chest was more heavily armored than the left, and there was only the wide-spaced lighter weave in the genital area. The mesh was more open on the arms and legs, but the spinal column was heavily protected. A pair of shorts, a sleeveless overtunic, a wide equipment belt, and boots completed the uniform. Our wrist gauntlets were disguised as ceremonial bracelets. Sounds unwieldy, but it was designed not to restrict movement at all. The mesh actually stretched and contracted as necessary. Really an ingenious outfit.
“You look like you’ve worn that all your life,” commented Baldur.
I couldn’t say much to that, and didn’t.
Baldur gestured, and we slid to Sinopol “now.”
Sinopol of the present is nothing more than a handful of hovels crouched around a shallow inlet of the Sea of Tarth, a pile of brown heaps perched on a plateau above the choppy black waters of the dead sea.
Looking at this scene of rustic poverty, listening to a boy whistle his flock of ironhairs from sparse grazing into the rough stone-glass corral for their evening slop, I found it hard to believe that an empire had centered on the spot.
The Hunters of Faffnir had founded Sinopol a million and a half years earlier. Then the high plateau was lower, the air sharper, and the water dark green and filled with fish.
Sinopol the Fair lasted five thousand and one centuries. The city rose for five thousand centuries and fell in less than a hundred years. For five thousand centuries the Hunters hunted and conquered the systems of the Anord Cluster. In the five thousandth century, the Hunters overran the Technocracy of Llord, and there were no more conquests left in the cluster. Anord Cluster is isolated by the Rift—impassable to large fleets.
Without conquest, the Hunters turned on themselves, first on the fringes, then at the capital, and in the end the tallest towers of Sinopol were fused flat into silicon block.
When the shepherds of Faffnir now dig their deep storm cellars—yes, the weather disturbances triggered by that mighty collapse have lasted a million years—they sometimes find a Bird of Pleasure sealed in the glass. Were they to dig deeper they would be astounded, but grubbing through ironglass with blunt spades is a tedious business. The poor shepherds dig only deep enough for survival from the devil storms that scour the top of that vast plateau that was once Sinopol.
Sinopol the Fair in the five thousandth century, the Great Millennium, was ringed with the eight glass blue towers of dawn guarding the corners of the city. The golden walls stretched the twenty kilos between each tower, double-walled, with each wall strong enough to stop a war cruiser at full acceleration. For all the brightness of the towers and the walls, for all the strength represented in the steelglass battlements, the city laughed, breathed with the merriment of a joyous people who sold the tools of war with a smile, their hair, that universal blue-black, cropped short, and their eyes flashing as they talked of the art of war, and sometimes, the war of arts.
For a Queryan Temporal Guard to stroll the streets of Sinopol required caution, Baldur had said, even after a body and hair coloration. The Hunters of Faffnir were hunters, even the city dwellers of Sinopol.
Strangers were prey. The slightest offense under the elaborate Code Duello led to a public challenge at any one of the many corner arenas, where smiling Hunters chose between the parties and laid bets on the outcome.
Since the high-tech era of Sinopol was a million years past, not many of the Guard had visited Sinopol or the Palace of Technology. Strictly speaking, the Palace wasn’t a palace … rather a city within a city, surrounded with force screens shimmering green in the dusk and gold in the sunrise. Kilos of closed and cool arcades, scented year round with the smells of a summer evening, were lined with storefronts.