“Loki …” spoke up Heimdall, and his tone was all business, no malice, which set me further on edge.
I nodded.
He handed me a wrist gauntlet.
“The tracking functions are off. We’ve replaced what we can, and it still doesn’t function. Nicodemus can’t figure it out either. Obviously, simple replacements aren’t the answer. It needs to be fixed.”
I took it.
“We need it today, before you leave.”
Set up, I thought, and no way out. Heimdall had provided the scene, pointed out that he had made an extraordinary effort, and given a rationale why no one else could fix it. I thought about strangling him on the spot in front of witnesses, but let it pass.
“Now, I certainly hope you’ll find the time to do it right,” was his parting shot, “since you’ve made such an issue about the importance of directional and Locator equipment.”
Dumb statement by Heimdall. He couldn’t find his way out of his quarters without an electronic arsenal and five different directional fixes. But because I was late, I’d have to shove everything else aside to fix what was obviously a problem gauntlet, which meant more time. And
I’d end up working even later for days or falling further behind with Eranas always looking over my shoulder.
I could have protested again, but I didn’t think either Baldur or Eranas would have stood for it—especially not when I’d been late. Thinking about the fiendish nature of Heimdall’s little gambit really burned me. How many others did he have waiting? As soon as I got caught up, would there be something else? I could bet on it.
Baldur had already left. Freyda didn’t even smile as she passed. Odin Thor had forgotten what he’d been saying and went back up the ramp with a blank expression on his face. Heimdall turned and left without a word.
I carted the gauntlet to Maintenance and dumped it on my workbench, although the continually cleaned and sterilized surface no more resembled a conventional bench than I did Odin Thor.
Suppressing a groan as I took in the overflowing repair bin, I called up the gauntlet specs on my console. On the off chance the malfunction might be simple, I placed the wristband in the diagnostic center, punched the stud, and waited.
“No circuit malfunction,” the console informed me in its precise flowing script.
That figured. The gauntlet didn’t work and didn’t seem to have anything wrong with it. Was there anything really wrong?
I scanned the area around me. No one else was near. Ducking behind one of the old behemoths that bordered my space, I slipped on the gauntlet and dived backtime. I couldn’t break out, but I could do a partial test anyway. After what was perhaps a quarter million back, I reversed and forced myself foretime until I felt shrouded in the bright blue of high speed. The idea was to see if diving speed had any impact.
When I broke out from right where I’d left, the face of the indicator was black. No one was around, not that there should have been with a virtually instantaneous dive and return.
Back at my bench, I tossed the gauntlet into the diagnostic center, black indicator and all. I punched the stud and was greeted by a fizzling sound and totally dead diagnostic center, followed by heat and the smell of burned and fused electronics.
Right there I was ready to stomp upstairs and throttle Heimdall. I didn’t need to rebuild a diagnostic center at the moment. I swallowed and tried to think.
Item: The gauntlet hadn’t done anything to the center before my dive.
Item: The dive had created enough power to overload the center, but not burn me.
As it dawned on me, I looked down. Down at the insulation laid over the out-of-time-phase flooring.
Of course, I wouldn’t get burned—not in Maintenance. I shivered. The innocent-looking gauntlet didn’t seem so innocent any more.
First, I fixed the diagnostic center. That took a good fifty units, even with massive black-boxing, and more waste to cart off to Vulcan.
Next came a data search on the console, about insulation, time energy, and the like. I finally located an obscure section buried under the other citations which mentioned the need to check the insulation built into the gauntlets and other equipment designed to “catch” temporal energy. Put into the data banks centuries before by a Guard named Baldur. I didn’t understand the theory, but the diagrams were helpful, and after studying them and rereading the explanation, the functions of some of the strange blocks of material in the gauntlets became clearer.
With all that in mind, I began to break down the remnants of the gauntlet step by step. It was close to mid-afternoon before I found what I knew had to be there.
Someone had removed the power source insulators in a narrow line on one side and wired a microfilament antenna across the underside of the gauntlet. If I’d broken out anywhere outside of the insulated confines of the Maintenance Hall, I’d have been lucky to escape with as little as severe burns around the arms and wrists.
Since Heimdall didn’t know the extent of my diving ability, the gauntlet had to have been a damned setup. Without a timedive, the problem couldn’t be detected, and since no one had been burned before I got the equipment, it wasn’t a real problem, but a phony one foisted off on me.
The more I thought about it, the madder I got. Heimdall wasn’t just out to bury me under a pile of work. He was out for blood, and, if that was what he wanted, that was what he was going to get.
First, I fixed the gauntlet, after carefully recording how it had been altered. Then I refixed it, with his microfilament antenna keyed to a false boss. Anyone besides me who wore the gauntlet and didn’t set the boss correctly, would get the treatment that had been scheduled for me. After a moment, I took out the boss and worked in a sort of timer, so that the antenna didn’t cut in until the second dive. If Heimdall went somewhere and didn’t make it back … Besides, I wanted the bastard to get burned in front of witnesses.
Late afternoon arrived before I completed my microengineering, and
I was proud of it. Heimdall would still be waiting in Assignments. The devious Counselor must have been confident to set it up, must have figured that he had me either way.
Either I couldn’t fix it and got fried on a test dive, or if I did, and complained, he’d merely claim it was a test of my abilities—and come up with something even more devious that I might not catch. No … I had to send a message that put a stop to the whole thing.
Heimdall was at his desk, leaning back in his high padded stool.
“Heimdall,” I said respectfully, knowing that the failure to use his title would infuriate him, “I think I’ve got it fixed.”
“Just ‘think’?” he snapped. “You should know!”
“I’ve rechecked and replaced the calibration, which was defective. I’ve replaced the power cell, which was sending an uneven flow to the instrumentation, and replaced the missing insulation.”
“Are you sure it’s fixed?”
“As sure as I can be without a test, but time was running short.”
“Why didn’t you test it?”
“It’s not mine, and I’d be reluctant to test equipment that’s not my own.”
“Well,” drawled the master of the sarcastic, “you don’t think I’d try it without a test, on just your say-so, would I?”
“No. But would you trust it if I just said I’d tested it?” Heimdall frowned. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s go over to the Travel
Hall. You test it, and if it seems all right, I’ll take it.”
Heimdall could be so smooth.
I trooped after him, down the ramp, and out to the Tower wing, keeping up with him, even though he was a bit taller and certainly more than a bit wider, stocky as I am.
I slipped on the gauntlet, adjusting it and making sure the false boss was in the correct position.
The dive was uneventful. I broke out on backtime Almaraden to pick a bouquet for the all-seeing schemer, but Heimdall laid the flowers aside when I presented them to him.
“You didn’t notice anything unusual about the gauntlet when you fixed it?” he asked as I handed it to him. I’d already twisted the boss to its loaded position.
Strangely enough, Frey arrived at the Travel Hall about that time.
Circumstance, my foot. Frey had hot-slid over to pick up my pieces.
Heimdall stood there with the gauntlet, and I decided he needed a push. Besides, with Frey standing there, Heimdall just might hand the gauntlet to him and let Frey take any fall I had cooked up.
“Heimdall,” I began, trying to irk him further with the lack of formality,
“it was simple to do. Tedious but simple. The dials were out of calibration. In addition, some fool had left some stray filaments running along the inside of the gauntlet. These caused some problems. I cleaned up the loose ends, checked the insulation, and made the recalibrations. You want to take it back to the shop and check my work, fine. I did what you asked for, the way you asked for, in the time you asked for it, and it works fine.
“I know you have better things to do than stand and check over the quality of my workmanship, and your talents are better suited for that. So, if you’ve made your point about the need for me to be careful and timely, just take the gauntlet. I understand fully that it has probably been a while since you did test dives …”
At that point, Sammis and Wryan showed up. Wryan grinned at the last of my remarks. “Would you like me to test it?” she asked.
Heimdall glared at her and yanked on the gauntlet. He disappeared, but reappeared within less than a unit at the far end of the Travel Hall. As he broke out, the gauntlet exploded off his wrist, and blood and fire spewed all over everything.
“Loki!” he screamed before he collapsed.
I slid to the end of the room, catching his still form before he even hit the floor, and made a second undertime slide straight to the Infirmary. Had to have been less than two units between Heimdall’s return to the Travel Hall and the instant Hycretis started transfusions with Heimdall’s shattered wrist and broiled arm under the tissue regenerator.
About that time, the floor rose up and struck me down.
When I woke I was in the cell block under the Tower. Lovely place it was, with a single bright and recessed light in the ceiling, solid-glowstone bunk without furs, a barred door, and a handy-dandy automatic restrainer field to scramble my thoughts and keep me in. The all-too-solid walls were slightly out-of-time-phase, and the whole cubicle had barely enough space for four steps in any direction. There was a stone necessity consisting of a square hole and two taps above it. Very efficient.
When I’d seen Ayren Bly years back, I hadn’t anticipated being on his side of the bars, and it seemed as though his cell had been more comfortable than mine, but that might have been a matter of perspective.
What was done was done. I’d been about as subtle as a sledgehammer in trying to get back at Heimdall. That might have been a mistake, but I still wasn’t sure that anything less subtle would have worked.
With no one around and nothing better to do, I began trying to concentrate hard enough to negate the scrambling effect of the restraining
fields. Because they were automatic and machinery, it didn’t seem to take too long before I could shunt the effect aside and slide into the corridor outside the cell. I heard footsteps and slipped back into my cell.
I got back where I was supposed to be just in time. Freyda, Odin Thor, Eranas, and two hefty Guards I didn’t know arrived to march me up to the Hall of Justice.
For the time being, I decided to cooperate and let them lead me along.
Since it was a Guard affair, the proceedings weren’t public. My father would have had some quiet comment about the dangers of power, except with his disappearance, I had no way to find him.
Freyda, Kranos, and Eranas, as Tribunes, sat up on the dais facing the Hall. I was placed at one side in the red-railed stone box reserved for the nasty malefactors. Frey was seated across from me behind the silver podium reserved for the prosecutor on behalf of the good people of Query, who would never hear a word of what happened.
Although the Hall could seat thousands, only a few Guards sat in the front rows, and the slow-glass was undamped enough just to light the front of the soaring area. Baldur sat in the second row, but he wasn’t looking at me.
“This is an informal Guard procedure,” announced Eranas in his raspy voice.
Frey bowed and scraped, and my two Guards yanked me to my feet so that I could bow and scrape. And I bowed and scraped.
“Counsel for the Guard requests disciplinary procedures for Guard Loki.”
I was on my own. Under disciplinary procedures, I didn’t rate counsel, not that it would have mattered. The procedures were greased to zap me.
“Senior Guard Loki,” I began, automatically promoting myself for no good reason except I was angry, “declares his innocence by reason of extreme provocation and fear of grave physical and bodily harm planned by Counselor Heimdall.”
Odin Thor, sitting in the front row, snorted loudly and looked at Eranas; Eranas nodded at Frey.