Drakon (34 page)

"How quickly our perspective changes," the Archon said, tapping his thumb on his chin. He looked back at Tolya. "This, I understand, will apply doubly to inter . . . universal travel."

Tolya bowed agreement. "Overlord, it's not only that a transtemporal molehole in the planetary gravity well will require even more energy to maintain the paramatter holding it open than one completely in the sidereal universe, but that energy has to be expended on a planetary surface. With fluctuations, unpredictable backlashes . . ."

Her voice trailed off. Energies that were a flicker in deep space could represent a planetary catastrophe on an inhabited surface. That was one reason most large-scale industry had long ago moved beyond the atmosphere.

"Plus the risk factor," the Director of Technics said slowly.

The others looked at her. "We're pretty sure there aren't any other technological species near us,"

she said.

Not unless they'd developed electromagnetic signaling too recently for the light waves to reach Earth, which was always a possibility.

"But we can be
sure,
after what we've discovered, that there are plenty of post-industrial civilizations near us in cross-time," she pointed out. "And we
know
that humans and derived post-humans are capable of developing them. Who's to say we won't run into more than we can handle, if we go exploring paratemporally? For that matter, we might—for all we know—hit a history in which that asteroid didn't hit the planet sixty-five million years ago, and end up fighting a ten-million-year-old civilization of intelligent dinosaurs."

Silence fell for a few moments. Tolya looked down at the hands folded in her lap again. Difficult to believe that anything in the universe could best these splendid predators. Intellectually she knew it might be a possibility, but her heart refused to accept it even as a hypothesis.
Keep your place,
she reminded herself.

"Which leaves," the Director of War said, "the question of what we do about Gwendolyn Ingolfsson."

The Archon's eyes narrowed. "How much in the way of resources would be necessary to continue the search?" he said.

"Overlord," Tolya replied, "no more than we've been using, but not much less. The odds of success are imponderable."

He thought for a moment. "Continue, then. We of the Race have our obligations, and we can afford that much." He smiled. "Especially considering that she held this chair herself, once. Chryse," he went on to the Director of War, "hold a legion in readiness. Inform me instantly of any breakthrough—I'll want to oversee it personally, if possible." He looked from side to side. "I think that brings this matter to a conclusion?"

Nods. He went on to Tolya. "
Serous
Tolya Mkenni," he said formally. "You have served your masters and owners well; better than any other of your kind since we created you."

"I live to serve, overlord."

"True, but we reward great service, nonetheless. You will be given a third life—and you may ask a favor. Not," he went on, "another lifespan beyond that, though. That would be hubristic."

Tolya felt tears of joy filling her eyes; not for the gift so much as for what it symbolized. Every
servus
child for millennia to come would learn
her
name,
her
accomplishment for the glory of the Race and the subject-folk under their protection.

"I—" Her voice caught. "I, I am thankful that I can serve the Race so well, overlord."

"The favor. Ask."

"Glenr Hoben, my lifepartner, overlord . . . if he could be given another life with me also . . ."

The Archon canvassed his peers silently. "Granted."

Tolya bent her forehead to the floor once more. "If the lost one can be found, we will do it, overlords," she promised.

EARTH/2

APRIL 5, 1999.

"Damn," Gwen said mildly, looking down at the socket wrench.

The tough alloy-steel had bent under her impatient tug. Luckily nobody was looking, just now. She braced the tool against a corner and straightened it, before dropping it into the workman's box.
Finished,
anyway.
Nobody else could install the power coil and drive-trains, of course.

Fun making them,
she thought. Almost like reinventing them, to get Alfven-wave effects out of the components available. It had been a long time since she worked with her hands on machinery, not since duty on the primitive spaceships of the first century FS. This cobbled-together abortion was actually more advanced, in a sense—momentum-transfer systems hadn't been invented then, they'd still been using antimatter-powered reaction jets, or deuterium—boron-11 fusion pulsedrives.

The welded-steel cylinder was starting to look more like a vehicle inside by now. Conduits filled with cable snaked over every surface in view, and a heavy circlet of six-inch pipe had been mounted around the inner circumference of the hull in the middle of the twenty-meter length, to hold the power coil.

Brackets for stamped-aluminum decking were already installed, left up while piping went in below. Curved consoles at the front would hold screens and controls. The air was heavy with the scents of ozone from the welding, with melted flux and phenol and plastics.

Gwen ignored the steel-rung ladder and jumped, hand clamping onto the dogging-lever of the roof hatch and swinging up to crouch on the platform just below it. There was a grateful rush of cooler air as she opened it and stepped up onto the scaffolding. The workmen were returning from their midday break, chattering and picking up their tools. The main contractor came over to her, averting his eyes from the way her sweat plastered the T-shirt to her breasts.

"All completed as ordered, Ms. Ingolfsson," he said. "Your own people shouldn't have any problem with installing the rest of the interior fixtures."

She shook his hand. "Excellent work," she replied. "Our little beauty should be joining the fishes soon."

The man looked at it curiously, the elongated teardrop of high-pressure steel lying in its timber cradle not far from the floatplane dock. Equipment littered sand churned up by heavy trucks, materials brought in from Nassau and even Miami, regardless of expense.

"You'd think you were building a
submarine
here," he said. "Not just an undersea research habitat."

Gwen and the others on the platform laughed with him; even harder, once the outsider had clattered down the steps.

"Lowe," she said. The young man, Captain Lowe's young nephew, came to an almost-attention.

"How've you been doing on the simulator?"

"Fine, ma'am," he said. "Be easy, if t'computah is givin' me the right of it."

"Oh, it is." When you could apply thrust in any direction, vehicles did become easier to fly.

"Singh?"

"The onboard systems should be ready in another week," the Sikh said. His normally sour face was even sourer; engineering work was beneath his dignity.

"The flight-control computer is working out well." They'd used a surplus fighter-jet autopilot that the USAF wouldn't miss.

"Good," she said, satisfied. A
bit of an improvisation, but it'll come in handy.
"Lowe, I'll go through the simulator run with you after dinner. Everyone else, get busy."

She stayed, leaning on the railing of the scaffolding. Tom Cairstens lingered a moment. "You seem to be enjoying this," he said.

Gwen nodded. "It's nostalgic," she said. "As well as useful. It's been a long time since I worked with machinery this . . . discrete. Individual metal shapes, separate systems, that sort of thing,"

"A bit like building a raft when you're a kid and playing pirate."

She looked at him in slight surprise.
Really quite perceptive, at times,
she thought.

"Exactly."

"How long will it be before Earth's . . . modernized?" he asked.

"That depends on how difficult it is to get things through from the other side," she said thoughtfully.

"From what I've been working out on the physics, it'll be quite drastically expensive, even by our standards.

Certainly we'll have to ship information and small knocked-down faber—fabricators—through first. And this planet is short of energy and raw materials until space is accessible. Several generations, probably, a long transition period."

"And in the meantime, you get to play with wonderful toys like this," he said, nudging the hull plates.

"What's life but play?" She looked at the metal oblong. "I think I'll call it . . .
Reiver.
"

Gwen smiled. "I'll play with this. And with everything."

"Not bad," Henry said, dodging the crowds outside the theater.

Neon shone on the slick wet pavement; their breath showed in white puffs. He felt Jenny's hand steal into his and squeeze gently. Carmaggio grinned quietly to himself.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

"Dating again, at my age," he said.

"At least you got to stop for a while," she said, leaning against him slightly.

A panhandler approached them, opened his mouth, met Carmaggio's eyes and stepped back against the wall.

"How do you
do
that?" she asked.

"They can smell us," he said. "Eau de cop."

The line for the 9:45 showing was already around the block. "Lot of these look too young to have seen the first trilogy," he said.

"Go ahead—make
me
feel old," she said with a chuckle. "I saw the first one eleven times. The man's a magician; how did he ever get Kenneth Branagh to play Obi-Wan?"

"He had to—needed a Brit," Henry said idly.

Relaxed,
he thought.
I'm actually feeling relaxed.
A minor miracle, considering what was coming down.

"Not bad space opera," he went on. "Despite the whooshing spaceships."

"I didn't know you liked sci-fi," she said, looking up at him out of the corners of her eyes.

"I've sort of gotten into it a little, lately," he said. "Can't read mysteries, after all."

She gave a gurgling laugh.
Damn, that's one fine woman,
he thought.

"No financial thrillers for me, either," she said.

They walked in companionable silence for a while. Even well east of Broadway the Upper West Side was fairly active on a Saturday night.
Yupper West Side,
he thought.
More sushi joints than Tokyo.

Funny; he'd been a beat cop here back in the seventies, when the area just ahead—Broadway and Amsterdam—had been about as shitty as anywhere on the island. Needle Park, and the name hadn't been a joke. Then almost overnight the renovators hit, and you were up to your ass in boutiques and expensive studio apartments. They turned left again, out toward Riverside Park.

Times like this you can forget what a toilet this town is,
he thought. Behind them the towers reared up and disappeared into low mist, shining outlines of crystal and light. The buildings here were older, grande-dame apartment hotels like the Ansonia, terracotta swirls and mansard roofs.

"Did you know," Jennifer said, pointing to the Ansonia, "that Caruso lived there? And Stravinsky, and Toscanini?"

"I do now," Henry said. "Hell, I've even heard of them. Want to get something to eat?"

"Well—" Jennifer said. "Well, actually, if you can stand my attempt at Italian cooking, I have something ready at home. It's not too far."

***

Lowe grunted in reply. The water outside the TV pickups of the
Reiver
showed dark, ooze from the Hudson estuary welling up below the keel. Billows of gray sediment arched up, barely perceptible against the blackness, falling out of sight like silty snow.

Apart from a low whir from the ventilation system, the
Reiver
had an eerie quietness. In the control compartment the main light came from below, the glow of the video displays and digital readouts. Three swivel seats met the controls, for pilot and navigator and systems control; a little redundant, but Gwen didn't completely trust the glorified abacus known locally as a computer.

"Six knots," young Lowe said. His toast-brown face looked almost sallow in the bluish glow of the controls. "Depth one hundred meters, bearing six degrees north-northwest."

Gwen turned her chair and looked over to where Dolores was holding the navigators position.

"Tracking?"

"The yacht's half a kilometer ahead and dead in line," the Colombian said.

She closed her eyes and monitored the systems through her transducer. The interface was clumsy—the local equipment was pathetically slow in transferring data—but everything seemed to be going well.

"Turn it over," she said to Lowe.

"You have the helm, ma'am."

She slid into the control seat and took the stick. The drive couldn't thrust omnidirectionally, only over an eighty-degree cone to the rear, but that was sufficient. Power was at ninety-eight percent, good for two years of underwater cruising, or several hundred hours of flight; no sign of problems with the superconducting storage coil.
Although I'd hate to have to take this thing out of the atmosphere.
She eased back on the stick, and a slight elevator-rising feeling of increased weight followed. A touch on the pistol-grip accelerator on the control stick brought the speed up to twenty knots, and the
Reiver
broached smoothly through the surface of the Atlantic. Light showed on the pickup screens, the light of stars and moon on the endless waves. A slight pitching disturbed the previous rock-steady motion, sign that the craft was in the grip of powers even greater than the technics she had brought with her from the Domination's timeline.

"Hailing
Andros Adelborn,
" she said.

A rooster-tail of spray fountained backward from the blunt curve of the
Reiver's
bow, surging almost to the forward video pickup. Radar showed no other vessels in the area, except for her own yacht dead ahead. The low shape of the surface ship drew closer quickly, yellow glow from the windows and the blinking navigation lights.

"
Andros Adelborn
here." Tom's voice; yet another Lowe was captain, and the crew were all her own Haitains, men who knew nothing and didn't want to know. "Ready for rendezvous."