Debt of Ages (8 page)

"Given this information," Tylar resumed, "I accessed Robert's recorded memories of that period. It wasn't hard to pinpoint that brief conversation."

"Wait a minute, Tylar," Sarnac protested. "Are you really
sure
that for just those few moments the future was teetering on such a knife-edge, as you said earlier, that a few words from me could have tipped the balance?"

"Yes," Tylar stated shortly. "Those moments may have been unique in all the timestream. I devoutly hope so. But at any rate, the inarguable fact is that an alternate timeline
was
created, by application of precisely the right stimulus at precisely the right instant. Our subsequent researches leave no room for doubt on the matter."

After a few heartbeats, Sarnac decided it was incumbent on him to break the silence. "So, Tylar, what do you propose to do? Take me back to that same place and time and make sure that I keep my big mouth shut?"

"Oh, no. I'm afraid it doesn't work that way. We've had a chance to investigate these matters in some depth, and while there's much we don't understand, one thing is clear: once an alternate timeline branches off, it can't be unmade."

Sarnac felt that sensation of groping for an understanding of the basic fundamentals that was all too familiar when dealing with Tylar. "Uh, I don't quite get it. If what happened can't be undone, then what's the use of all this?"

"Andreas' timeline can't be obliterated, true. But it can be
altered
under the right circumstances, just as ours can. It's precisely what my people and I are constantly on guard against, in our own reality. Well, in the alternate reality I'll have to bring about that which I've dedicated my life to preventing, and change history so as to assure that by the twenty-sixth century the alternate Earth is prepared to defend itself against the Korvaasha. I fear I'll be hard put to manage with equanimity such a . . . reversal of orientation."

"So you're saying we should enter the alternate reality and go back to a point in time just after the branching-off, and talk the alternate Artorius into changing his mind? Well, it shouldn't be too hard." He turned to Artorius. "The decision you made was entirely reasonable, given the information available to you at the time."

"So I've frequently assured myself," the former High King said drily.

"Ah, I'm afraid it's not quite that simple." Tylar sounded apologetic. "You see, after the crucial turning point the 'fabric' of the alternate reality becomes
very
strong for some time, as one decision leads with inexorable logic to the next. We've investigated the matter thoroughly, and the next area of 'weak fabric' when history can be changed occurs twenty-one years later, in the alternate year 491 A.D."

"
What?
But that's a lot of time, Tylar—time enough for a lot of water to have flowed over the dam. Won't the changes that lead to Andreas' world have accumulated a lot of, uh, momentum by then?"

"Indubitably. There will be certain difficulties, and I anticipate an extended stay in the alternate universe to assure ourselves that matters are proceeding as planned. But," he added brightly, "anything worth doing is worth doing properly, as someone once said."

"Your mother," Sarnac supplied.
If you had one,
he didn't add.

"Ahem! Well, to business! You'll need to be supplied, via implant, with updated knowledge that Artorius and Andreas already possess. Then these data will have to be supplemented with a conventional briefing concerning the precise state of affairs at the moment when we'll—"

"Tylar." Sarnac's tone achieved the not-inconsiderable feat of stopping the time traveller in his verbal tracks. "Look, I think I understand all this, at least on a superficial level. And I'm not blind to the ethical implications—I'm willing to admit a degree of responsibility. But like all adult human beings, I have to balance my responsibilities. And, as you know, I'm in command of a naval force that is shortly going into battle against some very dangerous enemies of the human race—
our
human race." His glance at Andreas was rueful but not apologetic. "That has to be my first priority."

"But, my dear fellow, there's no conflict! As I explained, after your obligations are fulfilled I'll return you to your office at the precise time we left it."

"Yeah, if I'm still alive! You've implied that changing the alternate history is going to involve a lot of difficulty and danger as well as an 'extended stay,' and I know from experience how rough that era can be." He took a deep breath. "Look, I'm not afraid of personal risk—not as an individual. But my life isn't strictly my own to risk. I'm not even talking about the fact that I've got a wife and children; I'm talking about—"

". . . the just cause which is entrusted to you to defend," Tylar finished for him. It sounded like a quotation, but Sarnac couldn't quite place it. "Yes, I can respect that. But I cannot let it weigh in the balance against the fate of an entire reality—a reality in which the human race is doomed to be slaves and meat-animals for all that remains of its existence. You are, at this point in time, the guardian of an ephemeral polity called the Pan-Human League.
I
am the guardian of universal reality!"

Memories of which he had been robbed not once but twice came back to Sarnac, for once before, in this very place, Tylar's eyes and voice had seemed to fill this artificial continuum of his own creation. And now, once again, the eyes and the voice were all that was or could be, and he was in free fall through a bottomless cosmos of the incomprehensible. . . .

But then there was something else. There was a face in which the blood of Earth and Raehan blended into a harmony of coppery skin and dark-red hair and features which held all that that was worthwhile in Sarnac's personal universe. And all at once he knew where he was and who he was.

"Tylar." He heard his own voice as though from a great distance. "Tylar!" he shouted—or at least the rasping in his throat told him he was shouting. Abruptly, all was as before in the elegant lakeside pavilion. Artorius and Andreas looked on in silence, and Tylar smiled slightly.

"You've grown up," the time traveller observed. Then he leaned back, head tilted to one side, as though inviting Sarnac to speak.

Sarnac forced steadiness on himself. "Tylar, I know there's no point in trying to refuse you. So I'll go along—on one condition. Tiraena comes too."

Tylar's eyebrows lifted. "But that's really not necessary. She bears no part of the responsibility; she was in Britain at the time when . . ."

"Yes, I know. But that's not the point. The half-memories you left in my subconscious but not in hers have been like a . . . a fault line between us. I don't want to take the chance of that happening again. And besides, Tylar—you
owe
her! I won't
let
you give me back my memories of what we went through together without giving them back to her as well, even if it's only for a little while for both of us." He took a deep breath and plunged ahead. "You may be able to compel my cooperation—but you can't compel my
willing
cooperation! The only way you're going to get that is by going along with me on this!"

There was a moment's silence, while Andreas looked lost and Artorius's face wore an expression that Sarnac had never thought to see there. Tylar finally spoke in a conversational tone. "How can you be sure she'll
want
to go along on this expedition?"

"I can't. But it has to be her choice. You have to give her memories back to her and then let her decide. So help me, that's the only way you're going to get my wholehearted participation."

There was another pause. When Tylar spoke, it was at least half to himself, and with seeming irrelevance. "My work requires me to violate my own ethics far too much as it is, you know. In your case, I think I've already violated them quite enough." He seemed to reach an inner decision. "I believe what you request can be arranged."

The grav raft swept in out of the red sunset, knifing through the mists under the ghostly outline of the giant close moon that hung where it always hung over this planet whose rotation it had long ago halted.

Tiraena zho'Daeriel DiFalco-Sarnac watched the Survey base come into view as the raft slid silently over the flatlands. It lay near the estuary of Naeruil II's greatest river, surrounded by native dwellings that had sprung up around it. The Naeruilhiv were at least the equal of their human discoverers in their appetite for novelty, and had little attachment to a particular place to deter them from moving close to where that appetite might best be satisfied. Maybe their disinclination to stay in one place long enough to form elaborately stratified societies had contributed to keeping them in the Bronze Age despite their high intelligence—it seemed to get higher every time the neural-scanner technicians recalibrated their equipment.

Of course, it wasn't easy to measure the intelligence of a race that consisted of two symbiotic species, so that each "individual" was, in fact, a duality. By the same token, it gave them a natural gift for communication. . . .

"Cleared for landing," the pilot broke into her thoughts. She nodded absently and the native settlements (Camps? Something else?) vanished behind structures that seemed to rise up as they settled like a falling feather onto the landing stage.

"Very smooth, Nicky," she approved. Nicole Hunyadi grinned in response.

"Hard to go wrong with these new models," the pilot admitted, slapping the console affectionately. "My dad—he used to pilot the old Solar Union drop shuttles during the war—keeps telling me that my generation's got it soft."

"Well, you do," Tiraena stated firmly. Hunyadi's grin was unabated in its infectiousness, and it duly infected Tiraena. She found it easy to share the pilot's irreverence, having grown up with the kind of refined grav repulsion to which the peoples of the former Solar Union were still adjusting.

Still,
she thought,
have a little respect! I'm more than old enough to be your mother.
But, she assured herself as she swung herself out of the raft under Naeruil II's 1.18 G pull, she didn't feel it, nor look it. She had, from birth, had access to the best bioscience Raehaniv money could buy, and at fifty-four Terran years her hair was as darkly auburn and her body as lithe as ever. Though chronologically older than Bob, she was almost certain to outlive him. It was a dilemma that linked her with her great-grandmother Aelanni zho'Morma, and they had both made the same decision.

She swung her satchel over her shoulder, waved goodbye to Nicky, and started toward the headquarters building with the cautious stride that was her natural gait's compromise with the local gravity. The sun seemed almost as stationary as the moon—this planet's sidereal day was longer than four of Earth's—but it
was
setting, and there was some relief from the heat that had, over the last few watches, made Tiraena thankful for her utility suit's ability to "breathe." Soon would come the long night when it would get as close to cold as Naeruil II ever got. The enormous moon kept this hemisphere's night from being very dark, but still it was good to get as much done as possible in daylight.
Which
, she told her conscience,
is a perfectly valid reason for me to go out and pitch in with the field work, rather than spend my whole time back here doing my administrative chores like a good little station director. Plenty of time during the night to catch up on all that
rhylieu
shit.

Rationalization completed, she grinned to herself as she checked in at her office and proceeded on to her quarters, thinking back over all the wonders she had seen in the hinterlands. The universe was full of planets with the right conditions for life, but most had not yet existed long enough to bring it forth. Earth's Sol and Raehan's Tareil were exceptionally old members of that exclusive club of F, G, and K type main-sequence stars which could sire living worlds. Prebiotic planets were everywhere, readily terraformable but as yet barren. And of the life-bearing worlds, most held only primitive marine microorganisms that made scummy the seas that lapped their landmasses of naked sand and rock. A planet with a mature, highly-developed and richly-diversified biosphere was a rare and precious thing. And rarest and most precious of all were the worlds which had brought forth sentience—like this one.
Every one of the sentient races we've found has been a new adventure—a new perspective on reality. Every one of them has been unique, showing us one more road that leads beyond what we had thought were the boundaries of the possible.

And then,
came a thought like a blighting chill,
there were the Korvaasha—the living confirmation of Goethe
(she had learned of him during the last fifteen years)
for they showed that sentience can enable its possessor to become beastlier than any beast.

The thought led her consciousness back to Bob, where she had resolved not to let it wander. The details hadn't made their way across the Pan-Human League yet—messages were limited to the speed at which the combination of displacement points and continuous-displacement drive would allow a ship to carry them; humanity left instantaneous communications behind when it emerged onto the interstellar stage. But it was clear enough that the mysterious menace that had emerged from the unexplored spaces beyond Loriima was yet another surviving fragment of the old Korvaash Unity. (
How many more?
some inner self that had never left girlhood behind asked God.) And Bob was now on the far side of the League organizing humankind's resistance. . . .

She shook her head, for she knew the futility of wishing to be with him at this moment. They had learned to live with the long separations their careers mandated, and the realities of space travel had made humanity relearn the patience of the Age of Sail.
And it wouldn't really matter if it weren't for the sense of something unresolved, of feelings he has that are always hidden from me, a part of him in which I can't share. If it weren't for that I could face the possibility of never seeing him again without this gnawing feeling of incompletion.
Her thoughts remained far away as she entered her small suite of rooms and dropped her satchel on the bed.