I didn’t feel that should be a permanent state of affairs.
Baldur agreed. “What do you suggest?”
“That you request the trainee with the best mechanical aptitude from the current third-year class for a hundred units a day.”
“Fifty,” replied Baldur.
I’d recommended one hundred units to get fifty, but I wasn’t through. “I’d also suggest more routine maintenance help from the second-year trainees, like you used to require.”
“If you want to run the operation, that’s fine.”
Surprisingly, Heimdall agreed. Maybe he thought it would keep me busy, or more involved with the Guard.
Narcissus was the third-year trainee, and I ended up giving him the same spiel Baldur had fed me—except I wasn’t quite so successful.
“You seem awfully sure, Loki. I guess I believe you.” That was his reaction.
I must have had some additional reaction to his doubts.
“I believe you,” he stammered quickly. “I believe you.”
I had wanted to tweak him with a thunderbolt to get my point across, but I hadn’t considered such a drastic alternative seriously. At least, not too seriously.
That spring plodded well along into summer before I got things running anywhere close to the way I wanted, before I had any free time for my second and more personal project—to locate a site for my own retreat. My parents’ empty house wasn’t mine, and I hated to go there, although I still did, but the dust just grew deeper.
I must have looked at every cliff ledge in the Bardwalls before I settled on a location. I couldn’t say how long it took. Seemed like years, but probably only took seasons, since the new shoots were coming out when I finally found it. Even I was tired of looking at rocks and more rocks.
I’d figured out what I needed before doing my surveying. The location had to be physically inaccessible except through an undertime slide right inside the structure.
I intended to build the exterior stone by stone in order to put it out-of-time-phase—like the Tower of Immortals itself. That way only someone with innate directional senses and the ability to dive into an out-of-phase building could get there. Not totally foolproof—Sammis and maybe one or two others might be able to do it—but it sure would cut out Heimdall and his goons and most others.
I settled on a site under the peak called Seneschal, a small granite ledge jutting from a sheer cliff. Although Seneschal is a quarter of the way around the planet from Quest, I figured I could cope with the sun and the time differential.
There are no real seasonality problems because the axial tilt of Query is almost negligible. That’s one of the reasons some of the older historians in the Archives theorized that Query was not the planet we evolved on.
Who knows? We’ve never had the manpower to develop archaeology—not since the Frost Giant Wars, and there’s virtually nothing that predates that in the Archives or anywhere else. And, equally important, who cares?
Any other race we could trace back for over a million years by time-diving and looking, recording what the Guards who went there saw. Maybe that doesn’t follow, but I thought it did.
Building the retreat wouldn’t be as difficult as it sounded. Queryan houses and quarters are generally small. It follows. We could dive for any luxury item we wanted from anywhere in time and space we could reach. But nothing big could be carried over the timepaths.
Post-Guard Query had a nonexistent industrial base, with the few public buildings and all housing built by hand. The better houses resist the elements well because the duplicators allow anyone to use the best materials for anything but planks and timbers and because any competent diver can partly warp the exterior edge of materials slightly out-of-time-phase. Only the most violent thunderstorms or electrical swirls cover more than the now.
All of this meant that I could build a small retreat, I thought, and one where my privacy would have to be respected. We all have been lovers of privacy, except for the inquisitive souls in the Guard, and most times they’ve been kept in line—most times. I wanted to make sure of the rest of the times.
Still, we’re also a snoopy people—we clearly like looking in on other cultures and people.
Curiosity and privacy … an odd combination, perhaps. But perhaps not. A curious cat walks in shadows all the same.
Construction wasn’t what I’d expected. My father had built his own home, and if he had, I knew I could. But I might not have been so eager, not if I’d known literally the years it would take.
First, I had to borrow a power projector to deepen the ledge. That meant holding a split slide in the middle of the sky with the wind whipping around me, trying to focus a projector weighing half what I did, wondering when the nearest night eagle was ready to start a dive at me.
I had to clear the area above the ledge of rocks that might decide to fall on me or on the structure. In addition, I fused the sheer walls around the site smooth enough to prevent any climbing into my retreat. I planned to mesh the walls exactly with the cliff edges on the sides, the edges of the ledge at the base, and decided to top it off with a smooth slanted roof that melded with the cliff.
After the ledge work alone I was drained. I lost count of the evenings
I carted that projector undertime and balanced in mid-canyon.
Just the beginning, that was.
Each foundation had to be cut precisely, and even with the mech section of Maintenance at my disposal, figuring out the proper pattern took I don’t know how many days. I managed to work it down to three kinds of stones, and once I had them, I could duplicate as many as I wanted. But I still had to transport each one by hand on a time-slide out to the site of my aerie. Aerie, that was what I decided to call it, perched as it was over a sheer drop from the needle peaks to the canyons deep below, nestled over the lightning storms that blasted the lower levels of the deep valleys.
Then there was mortar. That meant carrying water and using a trowel. I discovered that there is a technique to laying stone, and I didn’t have it. Not for a while. Sometimes I tore out whole rows.
During the days, I worked at trying to increase the ability of Maintenance to do more repairs. While it was too early to draft him, I had my eye on a second-year trainee named Brendan, who had a sense for mechanics. In the interim, I struggled with the overflowing repair bin, and with Narcissus, who had the unnerving habit of polishing metal to look at his reflection, rather than to clean it in order to repair it. He also tended to ignore work on the plastic or composite-covered items, honing in on the shiny stuff.
Both Maintenance and the Aerie struggled along.
After I finished laying the stonework and warping each stone out-of-time-phase, I began to lug the beams in. I carted the timber all the way from Terra, piece by piece.
I wasn’t building a castle on the heights. The Aerie was scarcely close to that—just two levels, three rooms, plus a kitchen and a hygienarium. The power supplies were the easiest part, and I was finally glad for the pocket fusion generator I’d lugged back from Sinopol, because it was a hell of a lot easier to break down, duplicate, and assemble than the bigger Murian fusactors. The kitchen and hygienarium were simple, but I ended up adding some extras to take care of waste disposal, rather than letting it run down the cliffside, and that was another bunch of days hanging in midair digging out another cave underneath the ledge and struggling with installing the equipment. Then I had to lay more stones.
The structure was the hardest part, especially warping each stone, each beam, out of time.
It all was worth it. On the evening when I moved in the last of the furnishings, stood on the glowstone flooring, and watched the sunset below, I swallowed hard to push down the lump in my throat.
I had built something lasting, something of beauty, and with my own hands. My own hands … that was important.
MAINTENANCE COULD BE a challenge, as well as a pain in the neck. Once in a while, I fixed something that even Baldur wasn’t sure could be put back together.
The Guard attitude toward machinery made it difficult. Frey and his people were the worst. They used and abused equipment until it broke, pounded on it to see if it were truly broken, threw it in a storeroom or an unused corner until it was needed again, and then and only then carted it down to Maintenance for repairs when they realized they couldn’t just duplicate it. They even failed to understand that to duplicate a larger piece of equipment requires breaking it down and replacing the defective part—and that you have to find the defective piece.
The first few times I got long-broken equipment with demands for immediate repairs, I made the repairs without comment. The next dozen times, I grumbled, suggested that Frey send equipment when it broke, rather than waiting. The gear went back to Domestic Affairs with notes making the same point.
One fine winter morning, after a frost, when the air was clear and I had a breathing spell, I surveyed the Hall and watched Narcissus over-polish the sides of a small ethylene-powered auxiliary generator. He still polished too much, although he had actually finished training nearly a year earlier and been promoted to full Guard status.
Hopefully, I’d get less spit and polish and more repairs out of Brendan when he completed training. I already had my eyes on some other trainees to track into Maintenance.
In the meantime, I was struggling along under the repair burden and not diving nearly as much as I would have liked. I wondered how Glammis had held it all together—except I knew. She’d essentially given up diving, and I wasn’t about to do that.
As I was speculating about the future, Ferrin arrived with a set of battered Locator portapacks. The hair on the back of my neck rose, but I ignored it for the moment.
Ferrin never carried gear down from Domestic Affairs. It was always some trainee.
I smiled.
“Oh, skilled god of forge and iron, of the fire and the energies that flow …” began Ferrin lightly.
“Skip the high-flown rhetoric. What’s the dirty work?”
“Frey wants these immediately. No more than one hundred units. He needs to track down a miscreant, and he’s headed foretime out-line—beyond the finer capabilities of the base system.”
I nodded. “Who’s the miscreant?” I really didn’t care, but I wondered at all the haste.
“Remember that Ayren character? Some woman bushwhacked Hightel and Doradosi as they were bringing him back from Hell for his chronolobotomy and rehab.”
Ayren? Ayren? It took a moment before the name registered. The woman had to be the one who had collapsed at Bly’s hearing.
“Ferrin … how long have these been lying around your storeroom and not functioning?” I picked up one sensor and blew a cloud of dust from it.
“Couple of years, probably.”
I slid off the stool, leaving the Locator packs on the bench, and marched across the Maintenance Hall. Baldur was in. I’d seen him earlier.
He looked up with mild surprise as I put a clenched fist down on his table hard enough to disarrange the papers, even to rattle the styli in their upright case.
“I’ve had it! Had it! This is the tenth time in less than a year that Frey’s done this. I’ve recommended, suggested, begged, pleaded … everything. Let him do his own repairs.”
“He doesn’t know how,” Baldur said calmly, as if he were used to Guards banging his workbench every day. “Glammis had the same problem, you know. I’m assuming you’re referring to the fact that Frey doesn’t ask for anything to be repaired until after it’s needed?”
“Of course!”
“Is it worth getting that upset over?”
I didn’t understand. Baldur, of all Guards, should understand. He was the one who taught me the value of maintenance, of care.
“Yes. It is!”
Baldur raised his eyebrows.
“Are you unwilling to make the repairs?” cut in a new voice, and I knew it was Heimdall’s from the cold tone of menace. What I didn’t know was why he was down in Maintenance, unless Frey had told him.
“No, honored Counselor,” I replied, turning to face him and bringing my voice under control, “but I do feel that a disciplinary action should be brought against Supervisor Frey for the continued misuse of Guard resources and his failure to use properly the tools with which he is entrusted.”
I didn’t know how I’d managed to pull that one out, but it might
work, I figured, even though my mouth was running ahead of my brain.
Ferrin’s mouth dropped open. Heimdall was silent. Baldur smiled a smile so faint it wasn’t.
“We could take this up informally with one of the Tribunes,” said Baldur. It wasn’t a suggestion.
Heimdall, who had appeared ready to speak, closed his mouth.
The four of us marched up to the two ramps from Maintenance to the Tribunes’ private Halls.
Eranas invited us into a sitting chamber and summoned Frey.
“I should be supervising the hunt for an escaped miscreant, but I am waiting for equipment which should be repaired and is not, and now I find myself summoned here.”
“Perhaps Loki should summarize the charge,” commented Baldur.
I went through the whole thing, how year after year Frey never took care of anything, how I’d recommended, sent notes, pleaded, and how the situation never changed.
“So you refused to repair the Locator equipment?” cut in Eranas.
“No, honored Tribune. I refused to repair it until note was taken by the Tribunes that this kind of procedure not only is detrimental to Maintenance but inhibits the timely performance by Domestic Affairs. If I had started immediately on the damaged equipment, it would not be ready now. And the Guard Ferrin informed me that the defective Locator packs have been damaged for years. Yet they were never turned in to Maintenance for repairs.”
“I see your point,” said Eranas dryly, “but we really don’t have time to play around with this. Guard Loki, you will, of course, attend to repairs immediately.”
He turned to Frey.
“Senior Guard Frey, you will consider yourself reprimanded, and after the conclusion of your search, you will inventory all equipment within the coming season to assure its function. You will eliminate the unnecessary equipment and turn all necessary but nonfunctional gear over to Maintenance for repairs. Loki will endeavor to make or arrange for those repairs or replacements as soon as possible. Baldur will oversee the Maintenance aspect, and I will personally oversee Domestic Affairs.”
Frey was white, absolutely white, whether from rage or fear, I wasn’t certain. I knew he’d hear about it from Freyda as well.
Heimdall hadn’t said anything, just had his head cocked at a calculating angle.
Me—this time I could read between the lines as well as anyone. If I’d had repairs to do before, they were going to be as nothing compared to what would be landing in my incoming bin.
Repairing the Locator packs wasn’t all that difficult, took maybe fifty units after I got back to my spaces. I sent Narcissus across the Square to Domestic Affairs with them, and, to be fair to him, I carried two waste bins out to the dump on Vulcan. I didn’t even mind the bitter smell or the hot wind ripping around me. It was a lot more pleasant than personally delivering the packs would have been.
I wished that had been the end of it, but what made Frey’s attitude toward me even colder was that Ayren escaped, didn’t register on the Locator screens anywhere, as if he’d vanished from the galaxy. Orpheus had been the last time a miscreant had vanished, and that had been millennia ago.
Then everyone raised the question about doing chronolobotomies before Hell, conveniently forgetting that the operation just about makes it impossible not only for someone to leave the now or Query but also for almost anyone else to carry them, because the undertime drag is so great.
Frey was called on the Tribunes’ glowstones for the whole business, and Eranas made the point publicly that it might not have happened if Frey had taken better care of his equipment.
Needless to say, outside of the coldly necessary, Frey wasn’t speaking to me, and for some reason neither was Heimdall. That might have been because he and Frey were friends. Frey was a disciple of sorts of Heimdall’s, and like Heimdall, felt that Guard discipline should be stronger, that a more authoritative leadership was required, and that the routine dirty work ought to be done by non-Guard Queryans.
The way I translated that, they wanted to run the Guard and conscript a bunch of young citizens to be their private slave corps. In the back of my mind, I wondered if that weren’t exactly how the Guard started.
Unfortunately, there isn’t any real history. Literally everything on Query was blasted or frozen in the Frost Giant Wars. What little history we have beyond that point is mostly records of dives and discoveries, because the Guard had to be functional.
I asked Baldur about it once, because we have computers and data lattices to store more information than we’d ever need, and he answered with a simple question. “Who had time to put it on the computers when people could still remember it?”
Given the inability of the average Queryan to do much more than request duplicate equipment from Domestic Affairs, it made a sad sort of sense, and even explained why Heimdall could even rationalize such a scheme.
Eranas and Kranos turned a white eye on Heimdall’s pretensions, I
understood, but I had my own suspicions about Freyda, although she never treated me other than kindly.
After the turn of the next year, Baldur spoke to the Tribunes, and Brendan was assigned to Maintenance. That was before Frey had gotten his equipment housecleaning under way, and for a time I thought I might be able to keep ahead of the flow of busted junk flowing down from Domestic Affairs.
But the word spread, and I started seeing long-broken equipment coming in from odd places like the Archives and Weather Observation. Nobody else wanted to end up like Frey.
The hours I spent got longer and longer, and the sleep became less and less.
I shouldn’t have tried to undo centuries’ worth of neglect in less than a year, but where would I have put all the junk? Besides, Eranas kept dropping in to check on me.
Usually, I staggered into the Tower bright and early, right after dawn, helped by living where the sun rose earlier, but the morning came when I slept late. Not that I had slept well, tossing and turning on the Dire fur pallet which was warmed by the yielding glowstone floor of the Aerie, but the shadows of the canyons below were already shrinking into black traceries when the midmorning sun hit me full in the face.
Even with the continuing lack of sleep, I had been an early riser, but that night or morning my dreams had been filled with visions of crimson skies and screaming night eagles tearing at my guts.
I ran through a quick flame shower, threw myself into a black jumpsuit, grabbed my equipment harness, and slid to the Tower. I broke out as close to the South Portal as a late Guard dared and tried to slink down the ramp to Maintenance without attracting much notice. I should have dropped tight into my spaces and broken decorum, but I didn’t.
Most mornings I could have overslept my own time limit by fifty units and still arrived before I needed to, but I’d overslept by more than a hundred. I was halfway down the ramp when I met Heimdall coming up.
“Loki’s here at last! Good day, night owl, or is it night eagle, hidden away in your secret perch?”
I bit my tongue and wished I’d never let slip the existence of the Aerie, but Heimdall had overheard my explanation of needing some equipment when I was asked by Baldur.
“Good morning, honored Counselor.”
Heimdall wasn’t through, and blocked my path on the ramp. “Being in charge of repairs in Maintenance, taking advanced instruction, living
up to your responsibilities aren’t too important—is that it?”
I kept my mouth shut. Heimdall was out to get me. I wondered how long he’d been waiting.
“Rather go out and fly with the angels of Heaven IV than stay in and do the dirty work? Rather blame others when your own lateness could be the cause? Is that it?”
The glint in his eye told me he knew it was unfair and was daring me to refute it. Damned if I would.
Someone was heading down the ramp behind me, but Heimdall didn’t look up. “Lateness shows no respect for the Guard and its traditions, and you show little enough, Loki.”
“Enough,” cut in Freyda.
“Don’t take the youngster’s case, Freyda,” boomed Odin Thor. “He may have all the talent in the universe, but he needs discipline.”
By this time, Baldur had shown up as well.
Heimdall had succeeded admirably in drawing a scene to highlight my lateness, and Hell only knew what he would come up with the next time I committed a minor transgression.
Baldur stared at Odin Thor, who lowered his eyes and mumbled, “Not like the old days at all. Any youngster these times thinks he’s got the talent to be a god. No … not like the old days at all.”