Crucible of Time Read online

  ***

  Amaduse let a shrug travel down his sinuous body. Getting a message to The Long View was iffier than he had made it sound. There was no need to trouble Antares about something she couldn’t influence. But now he had his work cut out for him: to get the Council to release the communications pulsar to him long enough to get the message out. Fortunately, he didn’t require pulsar time to listen for a reply. There would be no reply, not from a small ship that had no access to the power of a harnessed pulsar—unless they stumbled across similar technology at the other end.

  “Gonjee, I need you.”

  There was a scuffling sound, before the hairy face of Gonjee popped up beside him. “More research?”

  “Not this time, Gonjee. I need to contact the Interstellar Communications Subgroup of the Shipworld Council, on a matter of utmost critical importance.”

  Gonjee cocked his head. “Excuse me, Master Amaduse, but shouldn’t such an urgent request come directly from you? I am merely your representative.”

  “No, you make the contacts, Gonjee. If they ask, you may imply that I am too busy managing the emergency to make the call personally. Here is what I want you to say . . .”

  ***

  “Amaduse,” said the councilor’s aide, a tall, sticklike biped who looked severely agitated. “I have had a difficult time getting through to you. Your assistant, Gonjee, was adamant that you were too busy to speak personally. But as I am sure you must know, for a request of this magnitude we must be briefed more thoroughly. Can you attend the next subcouncil meeting, and present a peer-reviewed statement of intent—?”

  “Ssss, forgive me,” Amaduse interrupted, trying to remember this aide’s name. He couldn’t. Perhaps just as well. “Ssurely you know that time is far too short for that. Thisss is a critical matter potentially affecting the ssafety of worlds throughout the galaxy. No, Councilor” —he knew this was an aide, not a councilor, but flattery rarely hurt— “I must have access to the pulsar—tonight, if possible. There is nothing else on the transmission schedule of this urgency. If you mussst have a reviewed statement, use the mission orders-s for The Long View, and the Galactic Core team.”

  “But,” said the aide, “those missions were authorized by two different Council entities, and they—”

  “I know they were authorized by different, sss, entities, and they do not talk. That is precissssely why I need to sssend the message, and sssend it now.”

  “But—”

  “Councilor, time grows sshort, sss, and why are we wasting it, you and I?” Amaduse said briskly. “If you need more information, why don’t you asssk those entities why they sssent out two high-risk missions with conflicting ordersss.” Amaduse peered into the monitor, hoping it wouldn’t occur to the aide to ask why a librarian, even such a highly placed one as Amaduse, was involved in an operational matter.

  The aide made odd little snicking sounds and clenching gestures with its upper limbs. It leaned forward. “But you know that those factions are feuding,” it said in a muted voice. “We’re constantly dancing around the two, trying to avoid a fight. They haven’t worked together without quarreling in, oh—”

  “A long time. Yesss, I know.”

  “Anyway—” The aide reared its head back slightly and flared its eyes wider. “What is your interest in this matter? Isn’t mission operations somewhat outside the realm of . . . information storage and retrieval? I intend no offense.”

  “And I take no offense,” Amaduse said, bobbing his head and weaving side to side in a way that he hoped would convey just the opposite. The aide was sharper than he had hoped. “Information management isss in my view one of the most crucial jobs in the running of Shipworld. How could I take offenssse?”

  “I am sorry, I meant no—”

  “But in this case, sss, Counselor, mission operations on both sidesss omitted the crucial detail of information flow to the operativess! Both missions, in case you were unaware, are at risk, sss, of making massively harmful mistakesss unless appropriate information is provided to them.”

  “Oh, I—”

  “In the case of The Long View, all the information I can provide must be compressssed into a fearsomely short message. But . . . it is crucial that they get that message soon-esssst.” Amaduse drew himself up to his full serpentine height. The aide’s eyes tracked his upward movement in the monitor. “And sso . . . I ask you . . . once again. Will you secure me the pul-s-sar time I need for the transmission?”

  The aide was bobbing his own head now. “I will speak to the group leader. Perhaps we can find a way. Can I reach you at this node for the next few hours?”

  “You may,” Amaduse said. “Thank you.” He nodded to Gonjee to end the call. Amaduse the librarian was too pressed for time to terminate his own iceline calls. Or so he hoped it would appear.

  Two more calls from other Subgroup members went more or less the same way. The final obstacle was cost. Was Amaduse going to pay for it? It was a government responsibility, he argued. But here he met stronger resistance. In the end, to get the thing done, he agreed to meet the cost himself—which he managed by plundering discretionary funds from several of his other ongoing projects. By dinner time, Amaduse had his clearance to commandeer the pulsar-transmitter for the night. He was also cleared to send a similar message to the Shipworld naval vessels somewhere en route to Karellia. That was a longer shot, since transmissions to ships in n-space were notoriously difficult to complete. But when it came to that, they didn’t even know if The Long View itself had yet come out of n-space.

  By the time he actually sat to dinner, the message to The Long View was on its third repeat cycle of transmission. He’d closely watched the first cycle, not that there was terribly much to see. In visible light, a slight haze of violet light grew on one side of the pulsar’s accretion disk, where the transmission modulators applied their leverage to the natural whup-whup-whup rhythm of the neutron star. That glow built for a few seconds, while—as he understood it—the bursts of energy from the spinning neutron star were given some kind of phase shift, converted to tachyons, and dropped into the deeper dimensions of n-space.

  Riding the intensely powerful beats of the pulsar, the tachyons flashed out at translight-speed, carrying the message inward into the galaxy, toward the vicinity of a world called Karellia. Perhaps The Long View would detect the fluctuations and recognize them for what they were. Perhaps they would not. The hard part was not knowing. In all likelihood, the next message they received from The Long View would be its approach contact upon their return. If they returned.

  Amaduse watched until he was satisfied that the messages had gone out, and would repeat through the night. Then he turned away. He had done all he could do.

  ***

  Antares was left anxious and at loose ends in the control center. The matter was in Amaduse’s hands now. But even if he got the message sent, would John and Li-Jared be able to receive it? Would they understand it—if they were even at Karellia—if they were still alive?

  All Antares could do was wait with Napoleon and pray for Ik and Julie’s safe return. The robot rested nearby as she sat at her console. He hadn’t had a lot to say today, and she was a little worried that he might be running down, or losing interest—or worse, heart. She gazed at him with affection. His camera eyes were focused straight ahead at the monitor consoles at the front of the control room. From time to time, his eyes flicked to one side, then the other, then back to center. At first he didn’t seem to notice Antares watching him; then his eyes rotated suddenly to look at her. “Is everything all right, Lady Antares?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “I just don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s worse to be just waiting than to be on a mission and in danger.” At that moment, she noticed that the norg was plugged in, recharging. So running down wasn’t the problem. “How about you?”

  “I don’t know, either,” Napoleon said, turning his eyes forward again. He didn’t say anything else for a f
ew moments, and she wondered if that was all he had to say. Suddenly he blurted—it sounded like a blurt: “Sometimes I worry whether we’re doing the right thing.”

  “Napoleon, you surprise me! What exactly do you worry about?”

  “What’s not to worry about?” the norg said, breaking his forward stare to look back at her. “Whether Ik and Julie will return unharmed. Whether they will change all of history by accident. Whether going back in time is just a terrible mistake. Whether John Bandicut and Li-Jared are safe and will return.” He jerked suddenly, shifting the position of his arms and back as though to relieve cramped muscles. His eyes suddenly flicked back to the consoles. “Whether we, you and I, have been left in the backwater doing nothing while our friends go out to die.”

  Antares sighed. “I worry about all that, too, my friend. Also, whether we really can stop the Mindaru from overrunning the galaxy. I’m trying to just hold on to my hope that Amaduse sent the message, and that they’ll get it. And that they’ll all be safe. Because if I can’t hope for that, then I’ll go crazy.”

  Napoleon’s mechanical hands were slowly opening and closing.

  Antares had a sudden piercing thought, and she wondered why she hadn’t asked before. “Do you especially miss Copernicus?”

  Napoleon tapped and clicked for a few seconds before saying, “I am uncertain how to answer, milady. If I say no, I may seem cold and . . . robotic.” He turned his head to gaze straight at her, and his metal face seemed somehow stranger to her than it had in a long time. “If I say yes, Lady Antares, you may think I am only saying what you want to hear—or worry that I have been influenced by romance novels again.” He lowered his head slightly, his eyes downcast. “I think perhaps it is best if I don’t answer.”

  Antares cocked her own head to one side, studying the robot. They had been through a lot together in their crazy company, and she had grown quite fond of him. She hardly thought of him as “inorganic” anymore. “I won’t think any of those things,” she said quietly. “I really want to know what you think.”

  Napoleon raised his eyes to her again. “Then I will tell you. Yes. I miss Copernicus terribly, like the sibling I never had. Or perhaps like a parent misses the son who has run off and left no word.”

  Antares felt her heart break. “Napoleon, that makes me sad, as well!”

  The robot cocked his head to one side, as though mimicking her. “I know it sounds like one of those novels, but it is the truth. I hope I will one day see Copernicus again. But it feels increasingly like a forlorn hope.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that! They are very resourceful, all of them. I have faith they’ll be back.” Because to think anything else would be to give in to despair, and I will not do that.

  Napoleon said nothing to that, but turned to look back at the monitors. “At least we can be here for Ik and Julie. And I must be ready to gather all the data possible—whatever happens.”

  Because what we do here could determine the future for the whole galaxy, she thought. Funny how hard it is to keep our eyes on that prize when our friends’ lives are at stake.

  The console in front of her lit, and a text communication appeared. It said simply,

  The message has been sent. Keep your hope alive. —Amaduse.

  Antares slowly relaxed back into her seat and hissed a smile of gratitude and relief.

  Chapter 18

  Blowback

  PERHAPS THE STRANGEST thing about the starstream, from Charli’s point of view, was the presence of other living, sentient minds inside it. In a way, it felt surprisingly quarxlike to her, all of these minds with no body. The others were at once almost intimately close, while remaining distant and impossible to connect with. She had managed to glean a little, from listening to their thoughts and words, however indistinct. She thought one of them might actually have once been human. There was also the robotic one, who might have been an earlier form of Jeaves. Yes, their Jeaves, the Jeaves she knew. There were others, with names like Ganz, Dax, Ali’Maksam. A hrisi, a construct, a Logothian. There was the mind of a great, red star, which had died in the fire of the starstream’s creation, and other minds as well, reaching up from the far end.

  In a way, it was like coming home, living among quarx. While at the same time, it was hopelessly alien.

  Except for that touch of familiarity that came every so often. Could it be—?

  Ik? And Julie Stone?

  The connection was so tenuous, it was like hearing a voice from your distant past, so faint over the rustle of other sounds, you couldn’t be sure what you were hearing. But something else curious about this starstream: Every point seemed connected somehow to every other point, so that distance just didn’t matter in the way it had in what, through John Bandicut, she had come to think of as the normal world. And so she strained to focus on that familiar connection, on the voice of Ik, and Julie Stone, John Bandicut’s friend and lover from Triton.

  Charli felt their presence; when she listened just so, she heard them; but though she tried, she could not see them. But she felt something else, though: Mindaru near. That was why there was tension, and fear, in the whispers of her friends. They were in danger.

  Now Charli knew why Ik was in the timestream. He was here to stop the Mindaru.

  And Julie? What had brought her here to help? Surely the translator was involved.

  If so, then she, quarx, must become involved as well. She wasn’t sure how to do this, but she tried calling out into the stream.

  /// Ik? Julie?

  Can you hear me?

  Can I help? ///

  Over and over she tried, determined not to stop until her friends had heard.

  ***

  In the instant before the blowback hit, Julie imagined a voice she did not recognize, across the eons and light-years: Can I help . . . ?

  The blowback came with a blast of snow and hail and thunder, obliterating everything. She was carried like a leaf on the wind; and the wind careened and shifted violently, and she spun now like a snowflake on a gale. She was tossed toward the galactic origins, toward the Mindaru rushing up the timestream; and she was tossed toward the future. Was Ik still here? It was impossible to know.

  Her direction changed, and changed again. She caught glimpses of stars . . . and then of whiteout, and movement . . . and then abrupt nothingness, void, not even darkness, just nothing . . .

  And then light cracked across the void, and the wind roared, and she could only shake with fear. /Ik, are you here?/ she cried against the fear and roar, suddenly utterly terrified of being left alone here. No place, no time . . .

  Another crack of light, color with no name.

  /Stones . . . ?/

  And heartbreakingly distant, and answering /Hrah . . . /

  Dwindling . . .

  And the faintest echo of, Can I help . . . ?

  She wanted to hold onto Ik, but there was nothing physical to hold onto, no Ik, no stones, nothing but void. And pounding wind. And light, flickering in and out, like a faulty image . . .

  ***

  The blizzard swirled and tore at Ik. There had been a series of violent shifts in his own momentum through time, which felt like physical movements in space. The storm overwhelmed it all; it bit at him and cut, and tore at his soul. He was afraid. Wild animals stalked through the swirl. A wrong move could bring them into the open, where they would see him and attack. But what of the Mindaru? What of them? Ik clutched at his breast. Were they the wild animals? Where was Julie? Did he hear her cry out? He tried to answer, but his voice was lost on the rushing wind.

  Can I help?

  What was that voice? Could who help? It did not sound like his voice-stones, or Julie, or anyone else he knew. But he clung to those words while he quaked in fear, as the blizzard blinked away, and darkness struck.

  Darkness. But in the distance, shards of light.

  What was that? What were those jagged shards?

  Why were they suddenly turning, as though on an enorm
ous wheel, everything in all of creation turning around him?

  The wind was dying away.

  The wheel beneath him turned awhile, and then slowly coasted to a stop. The darkness faded into purplish light. He was standing at the edge of some great ice field, a weird landscape of jutting crystalline splinters and spikes. It did not seem natural; it reminded him of the Caverns of Ice back on Shipworld, where the deadly boojum had lurked. He shivered, but did not actually feel cold. He heard only silence.

  But echoing in his mind, the memory of words, Can I help?

  “Hrah,” he murmured, just to hear his own voice. It sounded far, far away. He called to his stones, /What is this?/ He called to his companion, /Julie? Are you here?/ He heard no answer, and felt afraid to call again, lest he break whatever spell held this strange and fragile place together. He feared that she would not answer, would never answer.

  The silence returned.

  He could not stand it. He called out again to his stones. Had he lost them, too? Had he once more lost his voice-stones? He shivered again, more afraid of that than anything else he could imagine, even death.

  Finally he heard them speak—sounding more shaken than he had ever heard the stones sound.

  *Uncertain . . . of our status. We may have lost entanglement . . . with home base.*

  Lost entanglement? That would be bad, he thought. Catastrophic. He asked, /What then is keeping me alive? Aren’t I nothing but a quantum-entangled ghost?/

  *We are uncertain.*

  Ik drew slow, steady breaths through his ears. He felt his heart pounding. /Are we stranded? Have I lost my connection to Julie Stone?/ He paused. /Please do not say you are uncertain./

  The stones took a moment, before saying, *We do not know.*

  /Well, that, hrrm, is not acceptable./ To be so utterly helpless here? Wherever here was? He growled softly. /Not acceptable at all./

  ***

  The pounding wind died down, and with it the snowstorm. In perhaps the oddest change to the world since it had exploded around Julie, sunlight suddenly broke through. Golden and blissfully warm.