Regine was bright blue, but breathing. The duty Guard medical tech had run diagnostics on her, stripped her out of the night robe, and wrapped her into a thermal quilt. She had a small gash above one eye, and a line of blood was dribbling down her cheek. Her damp hair was plastered back above her ears in a blond wave. Her eyes studied us both without much expression as the tech focused the end of the regenerator on the cut. Regine might have come to my waist if she stretched.
The tech turned to me, insisted on a quick check.
“Hell of a bruise across your shoulders,” she commented.
“Ice, I think.”
She pushed me into the nearest diagnostic booth. Nothing showed but the bruise, and the tech left me to my own devices as she went back to Regine.
I wrapped myself in a quilt. I still felt like I was a paler shade of blue, but I wanted to see Regine. She had seemed so somber. As I caught sight of her from the archway, I decided against joking.
She was sitting on the edge of a bed, her color close to normal. The Guard tech was wheeling away the portable regenerator. My entry rated a glare from the tech, but she didn’t try to throw me out.
“I’m Loki. How do you feel?”
“Wet … cold. Where’s my mother?”
“She’ll be here in a moment.”
Regine’s lips had a faint bluish tinge, but the thermal quilt had restored most of her body heat. She didn’t want to talk.
Standing there made me feel awkward, but I shifted from foot to foot for several units … waiting. Regine ignored me. Finally, I drew the quilt around me and went back through the archway to recover my jumpsuit.
I finished wringing it out and slipped it on. The fabric dried quickly, so it was only damp. Some of the stuff on the equipment belt was shot, but I’d replace that later.
I was getting ready to leave the Infirmary to check back in with Locator when the mother arrived with Freyda and Helton.
“Loki?” asked Freyda, the Tribune.
“None other,” I said with a forced smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to report back to Locator.”
She nodded. The mother said nothing, her eyes darting around, looking for her daughter.
“Through the archway,” I offered.
As I walked toward the exit portal to cross the square, I could hear Freyda’s voice. “ … the only one on Quest who could have saved your daughter …”
In that, at least, she was right.
Probably I didn’t have to, but I finished the remaining few units of the standby duty before sliding back to the Aerie for a solid night’s sleep.
Sleep didn’t come immediately, because I’d had one of those after-the-fact realizations, something I should have thought about earlier, much earlier.
I had gone to elaborate lengths to manufacture nearly one thousand phony Locators, to get legitimate access to a Locator console, gone over Sequin Falls to save a child who wouldn’t talk to me. And I’d approached the whole question backward—as usual.
How had people like Ayren disappeared? People who didn’t have backtime records to hide in or machines to duplicate tags?
Somehow, they’d had the tags removed. How could I have it done?
Have a surgeon somewhere cut it out, of course.
With that thought, I fell asleep, sound enough not to be troubled with dreams or fears.
Once I got into Maintenance the next morning, I turned my concentration to finding a surgeon who could do the job under local anesthetic. I want to be able to watch, and, frankly, I didn’t want it to hurt too much.
The Archives had some data along those levels, but I did want to show some care. I traipsed up to the study cubes for a bit around mid-morning and used Giron’s code to ask about medical progress levels.
The Tribunes hadn’t implemented their new code plan; in fact, for all of Verdis’s explanations, nothing of the sort had even been rumored elsewhere, let alone announced, which made me wonder how she knew what she knew. Who was telling her? And why?
In the meantime, Terra, late early atomic, northern western hemisphere, about halfway up my foretime range, seemed the best place. Sinopol had the medical technology, but I wasn’t willing to undergo what they might have in mind for strangers or imposters.
Before I dived foretime to Terra, I absconded with some medical equipment from the back rooms of the Infirmary. I also rigged a gadget with a miniature surgical laser which would cut the small chunk of metal clear of my shoulder. Rather involved technically, but as foolproof as I could make it. I added to that a miniature Locator that would point directly to the tag.
With the gadgets in hand, and after wheedling yet another Terran
language implant—the Terrans had more languages than some small clusters—out of the duty trainee late in the afternoon, when Loragerd and the regular Linguistics staff had left, I departed for Terra.
I could feel the moan of the change winds around me, not the violent shudders and twists that ripped through the undertime when the Guard meddled, but the little tugs, the fleeting flashes that weren’t quite there—except they were.
Terra equaled change. I wondered about the source of that flowing change, and while I couldn’t have said I knew the reason, I would have bet that some of the “missing” Guards could have been found scattered around Terra, stirring up the gentler time-changes by their presence. At that point, I wished I’d brought an energy detector, just for curiosity, but I hadn’t.
Most Guards probably wouldn’t have picked up the little indicators, the blurring around the edges of each entry or exit from the undertime, but the signs of changes were there. Certainly, neither Heimdall nor Frey would have sensed a thing, and because the change winds don’t blow backward, unless the Guard set up a foretime station on Terra and continually recorded, it would be difficult to determine exactly what changes, if any, were taking place.
Just because a change impacts a town or a village doesn’t mean that it changes much overall, and even if it does, the impact of such a change may not blossom until later. That way you have a whisper of the change winds for a time, before they become a torrent, and it can be difficult even to track. While it’s easy to find a change in a stable culture, Terra is far from stable.
For a moment, I thought that if my own plan didn’t work, I might be able to do something with Terra. I pushed that thought away—changing the future wouldn’t change the past wrongs of the Guard.
Besides, there was no time for maybes or alternatives. One thing at a time. I didn’t want to compound my errors, and I’d dithered around too much already. So Terra was merely a stop on the timepath I’d charted.
I knew what I wanted, preferably a small health-care facility isolated from any other with no one else around.
Despite the penchant of the Terrans to label every building and structure, and to number those they didn’t label, I had difficulty Locating a medical facility, taking roughly a hundred slides before I found what seemed to fill the bill.
The sign read, roughly translated, “Dr. Odd-Affection, clan (family?) practice.”
The front room of the structure was filled with hydrocarbon replicas
of plants—and empty. I had hoped so, and had chosen the late time of local day for that reason.
Dr. Odd-Affection looked older than I was and was surprised to see me in his office. That may have been because the front door was locked.
“Did you have an appointment, Mr … . ?”
“Loki,” I supplied, not answering his question. “You will not have any patients for the next few units, and I do need your skill. I am willing to pay handsomely for it. No, there is nothing illegal about it, and I would do it myself, but the location involved means that I cannot.”
I wasn’t certain I could have cut into myself even if I could have seen what I was doing, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.
The good doctor looked more puzzled than intrigued.
“I can pay you with any of these.” I flashed a diamond, a flat gold bar, and a small eternasteel scalpel.
His eyes widened most at the scalpel, perhaps because of the glow, and he struggled with his tongue.
“What … how?”
“Simple. There is a small metal plate on the flat of my shoulder blade. I need it removed. This device would remove it virtually painlessly, but I cannot expose the bone.”
“In my office? I’m really not set up for surgery.”
I handed him the spray container and the scalpel-laser. “This will sterilize and numb the area instantly.” I thrust the miniature Locator at him. “This will point directly to the metal square.”
The doctor seemed a bit glassy-eyed as I tapped the end of the surgical laser.
“That will cut the plate clear. Then sew me up and bandage it loosely. You will never see me again.”
I put two of the diamonds on his desk, plus the gold bar. “You can also have the scalpel and the local anesthesia.”
I could see the conflict by the workings of his face, but I guessed he finally decided that anyone who appeared out of thin air and wanted to be cut open was crazy enough to listen to.
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because I was tagged with this tracer plate while I was unable to resist, and I’d like a bit of privacy.” Which was true as far as it went.
“But I can’t do it here,” he protested.
“Where?”
He told me, and it didn’t make much sense—something about a hospital and his license and the government. I supposed I could have gone elsewhere, but he seemed so conscientious that I decided to solve the problem for him.
A squarish machine with a keyboard rested on a table next to the wall. I gestured at it and fused it into junk.
“Doctor, I really would like some help.”
“But you want me to cut you open while you’re awake.” He paused.
“You’re acting like you’re some sort of criminal.”
“I am a fugitive of sorts, but I can assure you that I am not a criminal, nor am I wanted for any crime.” Not yet, at least.
It took me a while, but, in the end, the combination of rhetoric and thunderbolts convinced him. He was a bit unnerved when I insisted on an arrangement of mirrors to watch him, but I figured he couldn’t be too bad because he didn’t seem to be motivated primarily by greed.
Even with the anesthesia, it hurt. Dr. Odd-Affection wanted to immobilize it, but I requested stitches, the temporary kind, and a sling. I was diving back to the Aerie, where I could concentrate on healing it, with the removed Locator tag in my pocket.
I placed the rest of the diamonds and the medical equipment on his table, hoping the good doctor could put it to use. Then I ducked undertime right in front of him. That way, no one would ever believe him if he tried to explain it all.
I staggered along the timepaths and broke out in the Aerie. My legs were shaking, and recovery was a top priority. I fell asleep.
There wasn’t too much I could do for the next day, except recover. The itching was so bad, it was even hard to think, but the healing was faster. Maybe cuts healed faster than burns.
The next day, as I lay there and itched, and willed the shoulder to heal, staring at the clouds that obscured the canyons below, I tried to take stock.
Item: I had one thousand phony Locator tags stored behind the wall not two body lengths away.
Item: I wasn’t going to need them.
Item: Verdis and company were unhappy with the present Guard structure.
Item: Contrary to what I had thought, the numbers of Guards were increasing, and so was the amount of high-tech destruction.
Item: Eranas was the last of the old-line Tribunes, and was talking about stepping down.
Item: Despite all my maneuverings and everyone else’s, nothing was obvious.
Item: Verdis was impatient and pushing.
Item: Heimdall wanted to be the next Tribune, and Freyda was talking to him frequently.
Conclusion: The present quiet was a lull before a terrible time storm, and I was going to have to act before long.
Verdis and her allies were pressing. Heimdall was continuing to build a private army, and Freyda had some plan of her own. Kranos hadn’t said a word, but I couldn’t bring myself to trust him either.
One conclusion was simple. If the Guard survived in its present form, Freyda would be calling the shots. Heimdall might think he was, but I had a good idea who would be, and just one part of Heimdall’s price would be a lot stricter Guard. Eventually, of course, Heimdall wanted to make the Guard’s corner of the galaxy his own playpen.
I didn’t want that, whatever happened, and I already didn’t like the excessive meddling. I could see the need for dealing with the sharks, but there had never been a need to destroy the Gurlenians. And I couldn’t undo things like that by backtime tampering with Query—that wasn’t possible. Likewise, tampering with other cultures piecemeal to create rivals to Query wouldn’t work. All Freyda and Heimdall had to do was send back unquestioning young divers to undo what I had done—and we’d end up with a time war that would make the Frost Giant Wars seem insignificant.