Steamrolled (41 page)

Lurch?

His ship is gone from orbit. I can find no record of his having ever been here.

Except his blood and that thing.
She frowned.
Shouldn’t his blood have gone with him?
Unless he hadn’t gone anywhere. He could have blinked out of existence. Could a time pin cease to exist? And if it did, what happened to the part of time he was supposed to pin? Did the impossible to know also take longer? Instead of outrage or worry, the Chameleon’s mouth turned up in a smile that Ashe hoped she wouldn’t repeat any time soon. It was quite frightening. She started to protest, but Lurch cut in with a mental
wait.

“Progress. I like progress.”

Ashe’s gaze drifted to the empty place where Shan had been. It seemed she was the only one not—quite—happy he was gone.

* * * *

The time snap back caught Faustus by surprise. His master control center shook from the impact, though it felt different in some way. If this was in response to his time pin deletion, it had been fast. Too fast? He frowned. It could be something else, perhaps Time reacting to an event he couldn’t see. That was the challenge. It would be better when Time couldn’t act outside his control. Relieved it hadn’t hit while he was virtually connected to the laboratory, he pulled up the sensor data. For the first time since he’d conceived his plans, he wasn’t sure what it meant, wasn’t sure what he saw in the time stream data. He had, he could admit, pushed past the boundaries of known time science, in his bid to regain what he’d lost, no, he reminded himself, to regain what had been taken from him.

It had to be Time reacting. There was no human left to fight him. It couldn’t be the missing time tracker. No rookie could manage this level of sophistication or have the knowledge to fight back. He flexed his fingers, feeling them tingle with the knowledge of the power he wielded, and pondered his next move. As if some other force sought to aid him, he heard the words from his youth, from his past:

There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune… On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.

Was this the tide? Was this the moment he should seize? Was that the secret? To act at the point where Time fought back? Was that the weakness he’d been searching for? Could Time be vulnerable when it was snapping back? He felt a tingle in his fingers, a rising hope.

He’d come so close the last time, it had felt like it had been closer than this, but maybe that was the problem. He studied the data again, from before and from now. There was no way to know. It was rather like a complicated symphony, trying to take down the base without setting off the nanite automatic defenses. The trick would be finding the right, or as close to right as possible, moment to pull the pins. A pity he’d failed to identify a lynch pin, though he’d always wondered if the Chameleon might be one…

He shook it off. That was old news. He’d taught himself not to hope, to press forward without hope, without mercy, but a small tendril of it uncurled in his chest. He didn’t know when he’d put her picture away—the only evidence he had that she’d ever existed—because he’d ceased counting time when he lost her. The pain of seeing her face affected his clarity, made him less effective, less clinical in pursuing his plan. And it had made him doubt, but surely now, so close to bringing her back, doubt was an old, dead emotion, one others felt, but not him, not anymore.

He went to his safe, keyed in the code that gave him access to the contents. The photo was in the back, away from temptation, but now he extracted it and carried it back to his desk. The covering was a scarf he’d planned to give her that day, the same green as her eyes. She’d never worn it, so it carried no scent but the stale one of long confinement. He couldn’t recall her natural scent, though he knew she favored
Pesibelle
, a plant native to her home planet, a plant that somewhat resembled a rose.

He eased the scarf off, careful not to snag the delicate threads on the corners of the frame, exposing the back of the frame. He hesitated turning it over, almost afraid to see her face after his long denial.

Halane.

Without looking, she came to his mind, the way she’d been the first time they met. No one but him even remembered she’d existed, though there had been others that had loved her, had wanted her. Hair like fire when the sun hit it, eyes the color of emeralds, eyes that saw so deep, he’d felt different…less himself, less hideous—and more brilliant. She made him feel beyond brilliant. He didn’t know he could feel so much, hope so much, or believe so deeply in anything. In anyone. She’d seen his soul, his mind and brought both slowly to life. He hadn’t known how dead he was inside until he met her.

Oh, she was beautiful, in stark contrast to him. Clean, classic features, an elegant body the perfect height for him, a feminine form usually draped in her favorite green. She moved like the soft breeze that came off the Kikk Ocean in its version of the spring season. Unlike others of her kind, she had no inbuilt prejudice against the people from Earth, against him for his unorthodox arrival into the future. She’d been fascinated by their differences, fascinated, he hoped, by him.

Because he’d fallen for her, fallen into love for the first and last time.

Had she loved him? He’d never had the chance to ask. The heady days of exploring time theory had ended for Halane when a time snap back had erased her from his life, from the outpost. The few of them who had been inside the time shields—testing them—knew what had happened. The Time Warden said Time didn’t make mistakes.

That might be true.

But people did. People made mistakes all the time. And the wrong people lived.

His hand trembled slightly as he stroked the back of the frame, then gripped the side and turned it over. Her eyes stabbed into him, like they had before, as if this photo had some lingering bit of her life force. They dug into him and unearthed all he’d done to try to bring her back. They looked—and condemned. She’d remained pure. He had not.

His ugliness—inside and out—coated him, permeated to his core. He slammed it back over, shutting out the sight, panting as he tried to find his way back to that cold place where he felt nothing.

You’re worth it,
he told her shade.

I’m not.

If he succeeded, would she see his acts, the compromises he’d made, the lives that had fallen to forward his plans? Would she see and despise? She’d seen good in him. Would she still see it? Was it all gone? And if she saw the good, then she’d have to see the bad. Pain, shame, doubt exploded from him in a wail. He cowered in his chair, haunted by the ghost of one the world said had never lived, so could not die. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t bring her back and face her. He’d lose her again and this time, he’d know she never loved him, never wanted him. Whatever chance he’d had, he’d killed it. She’d know. She always knew his heart—

Like a snake slithering through his thoughts, the lifeline came to tempt him.

If you control it all, you can erase it, as if it never happened. If you restore Halane, you will restore yourself to the person she knew. All this will have never happened. All you have to do is drop the time shields at the right time.

But I’d lose all I learned.

You could save it, let a few nanites, the ones you control, serve a useful purpose. You could hide the data inside the shields, coded so only you can access it.

I’d be vulnerable.

Not as much as you think. If one were traveling in the stream, not existing in it, when it happens, well, it would be challenging, possibly to the point of life extinguishing…
this alter ego smiled in a way Halane would hate, but
you could put some protections in place.

Yes, I could.
He didn’t know, couldn’t see how this self looked as he drew a shaky breath, startled to find he was bathed in sweat and stinking of the fear he usually sensed on others. There was risk in this course. If the time attack failed, he would have to start from the beginning, learn it all again, do it all again.

But if he succeeded…

…he could have the girl
and
the knowledge of how to control time. If she didn’t love him, she would love the knowledge he’d bring. She loved knowledge. She always had.

More than truth?

He hesitated, but the voice came again.
She won’t know the whole truth, because you won’t remember it.

He straightened his body, surprised how much it hurt. He would miss remembering, but he wouldn’t need the pleasure of others’ pain when he had Halane. And this time, he would make sure he was the only one she wanted. If he could control Time, controlling a woman should be easy.

* * * *

The Chameleon looked at Ashe with something approximating approval, as she secured the device that had been in Shan’s head, then shed the gloves smeared with his now browning blood.

Ashe didn’t like it as much as she’d thought she would. Her databanks should have updated with a location and hadn’t, which was troubling. She was sure he’d show up ahead of this time, which would put him in her past and part of the historical record. The stream was calmer, but with an unease to it that was new and yet not. She’d felt something sort of like it once, while vacationing on the planet of Feldstar when they had to evacuate the resort because of a large storm. While awaiting her transport, she’d stood on the shore and stared out at mostly calm seas, awed that such a big storm could be spinning out over that ocean. It didn’t seem possible. The air had felt different, she recalled, though she still lacked the words to describe that difference. She just knew she felt the same now, with a growing sense of a large storm gathering out there somewhere. Was that the problem? Was the future still too fluid for updates? If they’d won something by removing the device from Shan’s head, and it seemed they had, it had been a skirmish, or possibly a battle, but not the war. No, they hadn’t won the war.

I wish I knew more.
In theory, she could see why the Council didn’t just dump all they knew into every rookie tracker’s head, but it was a pity they hadn’t been able to hack the info. In fact, it was a bit odd Lurch hadn’t hacked it—

“Was that a paradox tremor?” Chameleon broke into her thoughts.

Ashe was sure she hadn’t imagined the furtive sense of relief she felt from Lurch. It was premature if he thought that thought line was done. He’d gotten a reprieve and that was all.

Ashe shook her head. “I think we,” she hesitated, not sure how to phrase what had happened, when Lurch supplied the analogy for her, “dodged a bullet. I have never seen anything like it. I thought—” She closed her eyes again and quickly opened them again. She did not need to see that again.

“What?” The Chameleon’s tone was soft, most unlike her.

Ashe’s hands curled into fists. “I thought I had failed.” She rubbed her face again. It didn’t help that much. She frowned as other impressions pushed past the horror. “I sensed directed purpose in the attack, though I don’t know how someone would know what we were about to do.” Somehow, in some way, Shan was key—or at least important—to the plans of whoever was doing this.
A lynch pin?
He didn’t present as a lynch pin.

That we know. I should have attempted to access his memory.

She knew what it cost him to think this and why he hadn’t. It went against a nanite’s deepest convictions, was the core foundation of their ethical code. He didn’t even dig around in her memory. The man looked at his woman, one brow arched. If there was a nanite level discussion going on, they didn’t include her in it. Again. The woman frowned, but in a thoughtful, not angry way.

“If you can sense threats in the stream, and if intent ripples through the stream, and not just action, then it would be logical to assume our target would sense it, too.”

It made sense. If someone desired to manipulate the time stream, they would need to understand it.
All roads seem to lead back to the Council.

I have to concur.

With a mix of curiosity and reluctance, Ashe turned to the only thing left of Shan’s incursion into this time. The device—if one didn’t count his blood and they’d assessed that when she first met him—sat in the dish where the Chameleon had placed it. The monitoring screen still showed a 3D rendering of how it had looked secured at the base of his brain stem. Ashe moved closer to that, sending a command to tilt the picture so she could see the underside. It seemed to have prongs, almost like legs, clamping it in place. A risky spot to be messing about with anyone. She shivered as she felt the indifference of whoever had done it. “How did you get it off?”

“It let go when the metal tip of the forceps touched its underside.” The Chameleon picked up clean forceps and tipped the device on its back. The small clamps flexed, as if trying to grab the forceps.

“Interesting.”

“Creepy.”

She would know.

I wondered how long the truce would last.

Her man bent in for a better look. “It appears to be a metal, but acts as if it lives.”

“Looks like a brass casing.” Chameleon touched the underside with the forceps and the legs fell back, like a puppy getting its stomach rubbed. She pulled some kind of primitive magnifying device over the tray, making it pop into a very large view. “Looks like a brass cockroach. Underside appears spongy and possibly porous.”

She leaned back, giving first Ashe, then her man, a chance to peer at it.

“Lurch believes a non-sentient assessment team might be able to penetrate the device through the underside.” Ashe offered.

“Touching it seems to launch its grab-on programming—” a line of beaded light traveled down the forceps and into the device. “That just never gets old.”

Ashe held back a smile. “I see that Lurch’s act first, get permission later, began early in his existence.”

Chameleon’s lips twitched, then straightened. “I’m not getting any data.”