Crucible of Time Read online

  Talk to him? Li-Jared thought, and his gaze clouded with darkness. Did anyone talk to me when I needed it? Why, sure they did. “You’re needed on Shipworld, Li-Jared.” “The situation is unfortunate, but it is what it is, Li-Jared.” “There’s nothing we can do to change it, Li-Jared.” Yes, everyone had been so helpful. Bong.

  “Can’t you talk to him?” he asked Jeaves, and then turned and gestured the same question to Copernicus.

  “Yes, but we are inorganics,” Copernicus said. “I don’t think it is the same with norgs. You are organic, and you are his friend.”

  At that second assertion that he was a friend, Li-Jared felt a sharp twinge. It was true, Bandicut was his friend and really his only friend on this ship now—organic, anyway. He sighed and crouched beside Bandicut, touching his shoulder, afraid to do anything that might send the human deeper into the fugue. “John! Bandie, can you hear me? It’s Li-Jared! Can you talk to me?”

  Raising his head, Bandicut wailed, “She’s gone! Charli’s gone! Gone forever on the winds of time! Eternity for Charli!”

  Moon and stars, this man was in deep. Li-Jared leaned down closer to meet Bandicut’s eyes. “John—I know. I know Charli’s gone. She’s in the starstream. I’m sorry.”

  “Gone forever,” Bandicut sighed, giving no sign of recognizing Li-Jared’s presence. Tears were streaming down his face; his eyes were glassy.

  Rocking back, Li-Jared turned and stared out into space with Bandicut. He could almost feel Bandicut’s pain, as an ache in his own chest. He could feel his own knowing-stones buzzing next to his breastbone, trying to stir him into some kind of action. But what? And then he thought: Knowing-stones! The idea dropped like a rock in his mind, and he recoiled from it. Let his stones link with John’s? That could be a terrible risk—to both of them. Did he want to take that on? Let Bandie’s fugue touch him that directly?

  Copernicus rolled forward toward him, but the norg didn’t have to speak. Your only friend. And he needs you.

  Li-Jared swore and swung around in front of Bandicut. He put his face right up to Bandie’s and grabbed Bandicut’s arms, slid his hands to Bandicut’s wrists. “Bandie!” he yelled. “Listen to me!” And when Bandicut didn’t respond, Li-Jared gripped the human’s wrists with all of this strength—and then slapped them hard against his own breastbone, where his knowing-stones burned.

  The effect was electric. Bandicut jerked, and his eyes snapped shut, and then sprang open wide. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a gasp.

  ***

  A sheet of white noise flashed across Bandicut’s mind, cutting off whatever thought was there. His brain wheezed, grasping for the intense focus of a moment ago. But too late—those thoughts were gone now. In their place came the words of the stones: *Hold tight to us. We will not let you fall.*

  His reaction came in a silent shout, because he felt more than just his own translator-stones. He felt Li-Jared’s, as well. What was Li-Jared doing in his thoughts?

  Before he could fully frame that question, he heard Li-Jared’s words, coming maybe from this crazy Karellian face in front of him and maybe through the meeting of the stones—but either way, they had too much force behind them to ignore: John Bandicut, do not give in to the darkness! We need you too much, my friend! Come back to us!

  The sheer force of the words rocked him back, but so did the meaning. We need you too much, my friend . . .

  My friend? Of course Li-Jared was his friend, but he had been so angry.

  But he had come to John in his need . . . in his silence-fugue.

  Silence-fugue.

  Something clicked, and snapped, and ratcheted into place. He had been in silence-fugue. Really deep silence-fugue. He squinted and remembered what he’d seen outside the viewspace: the vastness and the emptiness and Charli somewhere in it. Just that recollection was almost enough to flip him over again, but Li-Jared had an iron grip on him, both physically on his wrists, and intangibly through his stones. Flipping back into the fugue was just not going to happen; Li-Jared was small, but right now his mass was enough to hold John firm. Silence-fugue was over.

  Bandicut hissed out the breath he’d been holding and relaxed a little, and was finally able to focus his eyes on the face poised grimly in front of him. “Li-Jared!” he gasped. “You stopped it. You pulled me out. Thank you!”

  “Are you all right, Bandie?” Li-Jared asked.

  He had to think for a moment. He was all right, yes. But . . .

  Charli was gone. Charli had failed. The quarx’s presence was no longer there; it was blown away like smoke into the infinite silence and dark.

  Chapter 35

  Homecoming

  AS THEIR FLIGHT up the timestream blurred to a stop, Julie felt something wrong. The connection with Antares had shredded away. It was gone. She sensed that she and Ik had missed something, a target maybe; she felt they had overshot, as if they were on skates, and an outstretched hand had tried to catch them, but couldn’t hold on. She also sensed that some part of herself nearby, her physical body, was alive but strangely inert.

  Her thoughts felt weirdly frozen in that moment.

  Time stuttered . . . stopped . . . then started again.

  And then something glowed around her like a halo. The unpleasant separation evaporated, replaced by a wholeness she’d almost forgotten, her own body around her, organic and breathing. But it was also struggling ferociously on the inside, jarred out of an unnatural slumber.

  The powerlessness gave way, and she snapped her eyes open and rasped a searing breath. Her throat was bone dry. Her vision swam, and she fought to focus on something in front of her, cream-colored and smooth. It was the inner-eggshell of the launch-pod in which she had lain since departure. A couch pressed against her back, and a headrest behind her head. She was back. She was in the exact place where she’d begun her journey.

  She forced her head to the left. Ik’s pale visage gazed back at her from the other couch. He made a hoarse sound and rubbed his temples, wincing. “You okay?” she managed, her voice a sandpaper whisper.

  His reply, “Hrah,” was equally rough, but affirmative. They were home again. They had returned alive. As if in response to the thought, the pod over her head cracked open, admitting light. A shape bobbed against the opening, the silhouette of a head. She strained to recognize the shape. It was the spidery creature who’d buckled them in, a billion years ago. “Enwin!” she wheezed.

  Enwin breathed a noisy sigh of relief. “You are alive, thank the One!”

  Ik responded, hacking. “Hrrm, of course we are alive!”

  Enwin made a buzzing sound. “We were not certain.” Her face was in shadow, but she was hissing in agitation.

  “What, hrahhh-h-h, do you mean?”

  Enwin spoke to someone outside, then said calmly to Julie and Ik, “You have been . . . frozen lifeless . . . for so long.”

  “What? Frozen? How long?” Julie’s voice cracked, and she dry-swallowed, then sipped water from a tube Enwin guided to her lips. She had a sudden, jarring thought. She found her voice again, though it remained husky. “Is Antares here? She came and found us! She brought us back! Is she okay?”

  “She is safe,” Enwin said. “She is on her way here. She has been waiting anxiously for you to emerge. As all of us have.”

  Julie stared at her, thoughts spinning. “You said we were frozen?”

  Enwin’s spidery fingers worked at Julie’s harness. “More like paralyzed, I told them. Near-dead, others said.”

  Julie shuddered. “How long?”

  Enwin finally got the harness loose. “It has been forty-two days since you entered the device. Thirty-seven, since your last communication from the ghoststream.”

  Julie raised her head to stare at the creature. The effort hurt. Forty-two days. She remembered the feeling of skidding, overshooting . . .

  “And thirty-four since . . . Antares emerged.”

  Something in Enwin’s voice was troubling. “What about Antar
es? What aren’t you telling us?”

  “Just that—” and Enwin drew back “—oh, it will all be explained in the debriefing.”

  “What about Antares?”

  Enwin sighed. “She returned safely, but before you. It will all be told. They are eager to hear your story.”

  ***

  That was all Enwin would say. There was a great deal of commotion around getting them out of the pod. They were hustled off for medical evaluations which, to Julie, seemed of dubious value. How many doctors on Shipworld knew anything about human physiology? All she wanted was a good, long drink of water. But she was arguing against a tide. A swarm of cyberdocs and scanners and living docs surrounded them. The examination took forever, evaluating both their physical and their mental states. Fair enough, but why were the docs so concerned about the manner of their return? Julie tried to ask, but the docs were useless as a source of information.

  “We overshot, didn’t we? Into the future?”

  “Yes, but, well . . . Cromus is really the one to talk to . . .”

  “And what happened here—while we were in the future?”

  “Nearly null autonomic function . . .”

  “You mean we were dead? Almost dead?”

  “Difficult to say exactly. More trancelike . . .”

  Voices and tempers rising. “We were in some kind of goddamn temporal stasis, weren’t we? Our bodies were waiting to catch up in time with our minds. Is that it? Is that what happened?”

  “That is a likely hypothesis. Are you feeling emotional distress arising from the experience?”

  “I wasn’t before, but I am now. What about Antares? What happened to her?”

  “You will see her soon. Now, please, we need to go over one more set of parameters . . .”

  “You know, I think I’ve given you all the parameters you’re going to get. Take these goddamn monitors off me. I want to see my friend.”

  “Really, it would be better . . .”

  Her outburst inspired Ik, whose voice was louder. Finally the docs grudgingly pronounced them fit for debriefing, and fit to travel from the launch station back to the main control center. A shuttle was waiting.

  “And our friend?” Julie asked.

  “She arrived with the shuttle. She is coming to join you.”

  Julie squinted past the crowd of alien techs and workers. “Hrah!” said Ik, raising his arm and pointing. Julie finally spotted them—first Napoleon, and then Antares. With Ik right behind, she pushed past the docs to get to them.

  Antares looked tired but happy. Julie cried out, and Antares rushed to embrace them both. Antares felt thin to her, and there wasn’t quite the warmth Julie expected. Clearly Antares was emotionally exhausted, probably from the ordeal of waiting to see if her friends had survived.

  “You brought us home!” Julie sighed, releasing her embrace. What did it cost you? She said softly, “Antares, thank you. Are you all right? You look like you’ve been through—”

  “Not here,” Antares whispered. She was visibly subdued. “Tell me, both of you! You are well?”

  Before either could speak, Napoleon surged forward, clicking loudly, and exclaimed, “Ik and Lady Julie, I am pleased beyond measure to welcome you back! Lady Antares and I were terribly concerned for you.”

  “Napoleon!” Julie cried. “Am I glad to see you, too, old friend.” She felt an urge to hug him, too, but settled for pressing her hand to his metallic shoulder and bending close. She was genuinely moved to see the robot again. She was willing to bet he had been working in his own way to bring them home.

  Antares led the way to a marginally secluded spot where they could talk for a few minutes, much as they had done the first time Ik and Julie had returned. “Did they tell you what happened when the ghoststream brought you back?” Antares asked, her voice a papery whisper.

  Julie snorted. “You’d have thought we were so top-secret we weren’t cleared to know our own lives. But we think we overshot the present point on our return and skidded into the future. While our bodies—”

  “Hrah!” Ik rasped. “Our bodies were in the launcher and couldn’t catch up. They could only wait for the time to catch up with where we were.” He said it calmly, but Julie saw him shiver.

  Antares closed her eyes, as though reliving something too painful to describe. “I’m so sorry. I brought you back too fast, and I couldn’t hold onto you. I couldn’t bring you in for a landing. I tried to slow you down, to keep you from overshooting. I just couldn’t do it.” She gasped for breath. “For a long time, I thought I might have killed you.”

  She was shaking, and Julie put out a hand to steady her. “Hey! We’re okay. You saved us!” Julie let out a wheezing, sardonic laugh. “I guess we’re lucky they didn’t decide to dissect us, to see why we weren’t moving.”

  Antares shuddered again. “I think some of them wanted to.”

  Napoleon raised both arms to a crossed position in front of him. “That,” he said, with sharp, clear enunciation, “would not have happened. Not on my watch.”

  “Bless you, Napoleon,” Julie said, and this time she really did hug his metal frame.

  “No, Napoleon,” Antares said. “Not on my watch, either.” She glanced sideways at the mission staff who were waiting for them. “And now, we are all to board the shuttle. While we’re en route, I want to hear what happened. Everything. Are you tired? Hungry?”

  “Hrllll, both,” Ik said fervently.

  “Then let’s go get aboard. There’s food, and you can rest a little during the ride.”

  ***

  On the flight to the main station, a selection of simple food was indeed laid out for them, and they ate every crumb. There was little chance for rest, though, and no privacy to talk. Several members of the Galactic Core Mission team peppered them with questions, trying to get preliminary statements before details faded from their memories. This group was focused on what had happened at the galactic core, with the Mindaru, and Antares clearly also wanted to know these things. But Julie knew perfectly well that they were going to have to repeat all their answers once they reached the control station.

  Through it all, Ik paced the length of the shuttle’s passenger compartment, and Julie occasionally got up and did likewise. After the long confinement in the pod, it felt good to move, however stiffly.

  It was frustrating, though, to have no chance to talk privately among themselves. Julie grew increasingly restless. Arrival at the station came none too soon.

  ***

  The formal debriefing began, not with their arrival in the familiar conference space, but with the arrival of Cromus shortly thereafter. His carapace gleamed ebony with auburn highlights, as though it had just been polished. Had he dressed up for them? Julie wondered. No, it turned out, he had returned in haste from Shipworld proper, where he had been in meetings with the Ruling Circle. What was that all about? Julie wondered. But no explanation was forthcoming.

  In leading the debriefing, Cromus was joined by the scientist, Watts. Besides them, Ik and Julie faced a team of perhaps two dozen mission specialists. Antares was given a seat nearby. Despite her participation at the end, Antares had had no interaction with the Mindaru, and she was asked no questions. Later they would talk about the extraction.

  Cromus was all business, but he did take time to acknowledge the strain they were under. “We know you are k-k-k-tired,” he rasped, clicking his claws together. “We know you need recovery time. But these first hours are—” rasp “k-k-critical, in gathering your reports while they are fresh in your minds.” One eye stalk centered on Julie, and the other on Ik. “Your thoughts and observations must be k-k-correlated with what we were able to gather through the upstream link-k.” He snapped his claws sharply. “In short-t, we need to know what has become of the M-M-Mindaru.”

  Julie and Ik told him as much as they could—at length, over several hours, each hour dragging on more slowly than the one before. Julie slipped into a dreamy haze as they repeated answers, clarified,
and repeated again. By the time the debriefing team sputtered out of questions, she was starting to wonder if she could trust her own memory. Had they really tangled with Mindaru in the deep past, and survived? If it was a dream, Ik had had the same dream. She heard a quiet assurance from her stones: *It was no dream . . .* and that lifted her like a cool breath of oxygen.

  Glancing sideways at Antares, Julie was surprised to see the Thespi watching and listening with an expression of impassivity, as if she, too, had been worn down by the questioning.

  Just when Julie thought she could take no more, Cromus signaled an end to the questions. “Thank-k-k you. If we are able to confirm your success in—” rasp “—block-k-king Mindaru passage from the source, and out of the timestream, we will rest easier. We k-k-thank-k-k you.”

  Julie slumped and nodded her acknowledgment.

  Watts strode forward, stretching his spindly arms wide. “Tomorrow, we will look into the harrowing question of what happened on your return. I tell you honestly, it was terrifying for all of us when—as we now know—you overshot your return date. You were in stasis, but on the outside, you seemed as good as dead! I am pleased that we did not remove your physical bodies for scanning or autopsy.”

  That made Julie’s eyes widen.

  But Watts was already moving on. “I have some other information to pass on from our headquarters. It seems a high-priority tachyonic communication has been received from the region of the planet Krella. The fleet commander there has confirmed cessation of the temporal tide that opened the route for the Mindaru in the first place. If this claim holds, there may be no further need for the kind of exploration we have just concluded.”

  That brought chitters and rasps of approval from all the briefing team—and a question from Ik. “Are you saying, hrrm, that John Bandicut and Li-Jared’s mission has succeeded?”

  Watts swayed from side to side. “Possibly. Probably. The message was from the naval detachment that went to assist The Long View. There was little detail, but it seemed to indicate that the mission had already succeeded at the time of the fleet’s arrival at Krella.”