Storm at the Edge of Time (16 page)

Footsteps retreated; a distant door opened and closed. Silence. Jamie's trembling knees gave out and she sank to the narrow walkway, her feet braced against
the low rampart, pushing her as far from the edge as possible.

No one said anything. The wind sang as it swirled around the odd shaped building. Far below in the distance, city gave way to shadow-smeared fields and darkened woods. Above, the sky flamed with red and purple, while along the horizon storm clouds piled into a dark wall.

Jamie shivered at the reminder. Storms. They had failed. The third staff would not be added to the other two. Urkar would fight his long battle alone. And he would lose.

“I always wanted to do something important,” she said dully. “But I didn't expect to be the one who'd screw up and let the universe end.”

Tyaak only nodded miserably, but Arni was looking thoughtful. “Tyaak, you mentioned ‘energy rifts' and so did that grass-green guy. What are they? Are they part of Urkar's storm?”

“They are rips in the fabric of the universe, places where energy and matter get sucked in and vanish. But unlike black holes they spread, sometimes devouring whole suns. Usually they are isolated, but recently a number have been appearing and spreading in a nearby section of the galaxy.”

Arni looked more confused than before, but asked no more questions. Tyaak ran his hand through his crest of hair, which was already beginning to go limp again. “It sounds crazy even to think of it, but energy rifts could be a manifestation of Urkar's storm. This ‘magic' of yours may be just another way of seeing and working in the same universe. The forces Urkar talks about are
very like the destructive forces of an energy rift or the creative ones at the heart of a star. Perhaps the only difference is whether you call the laws that govern them ‘physics' or ‘magic.' ”

Jamie nodded. “And in either case, this chunk of the universe is gradually going to be destroyed, and those creepy folks working for the other side are going to be in the driver's seat until it is.”

“Unless we can stop the storm,” Tyaak said thought&%.

“But if we can't get hold of the third staff…” Jamie began.

Tyaak turned to her, looking grimly determined. “We have a goal. We failed to reach it one way, but there must be others.”

“He's got a plan!” Arni crowed.

Tyaak laughed. “It hardly deserves such a grand name. It is more a chain of hunches. But first we must get back to the ship. They probably believe we have gotten away by now. Shall we try for real?”

He and Arni walked briskly up the sloping ledge to the nearest door. Eyes averted from the edge, Jamie crawled up after them.

They slipped through, and the door closed on the hollow emptiness outside, leaving them in an empty corridor. Jamie sagged against the solid wall, panting with relief. She couldn't deny that she had magic. She'd always sensed she could see ghosts, and that one terrifying try with the glass had made her refuse to admit she could move things without touching them. But Arni's suggestion of flying magically had never entered her wildest fantasies.

She didn't want to start with it now.

Tyaak found stairs; and for ages, it seemed, they spiraled down them, sharpening their ability to tell when someone was coming. When they couldn't dodge into hiding, they perfected the invisibility trick, thinking themselves into nothing but walls, floor, and empty space. Jamie was getting quite good at working with surface texture and angles of light.

Once outside, they ignored the transport they had come in, in case it was being watched, and walked several blocks to catch another back to the spaceport. It wasn't until they were locked in Tyaak's ship again that Jamie relaxed. She was surprised at that, considering how alien it was, but compared to twenty-sixth-century London, it felt like home. Arni, for whom this part of the adventure had seemed close to fantasy, was clearly less shaken.

“Got any more of those food sticks?” he asked. “That one was tasty but kind of small.”

Tyaak went to a wall dispenser, produced several more and mechanically passed them around, his mind obviously elsewhere.

“So what's your plan?” Jamie asked as she bit gingerly into her pink food bar. “How are three kids going to snatch something that a bunch of scientists and a magic-working celery stalk are determined to take to another planet?”

“Well, that Valgrindol is one of the enemy all right, and it is aware of us. So it will be difficult to get to the staff while it is on Earth. But once they leave for Tarka Four, the staff will go into a cargo hold while the Valgrindol stays in the passenger section. That will be our chance.”

Jamie looked skeptical. “But that ship's zooming off into space in a couple of hours. I'm sure Arni and I don't have the right credentials to buy tickets, and anyway, once we've got our stolen property, how do we get back with it?”

“Must you be so negative? We will not bother with tickets. When I was preparing to come to this planet, the ship's computers were loaded with all standard Earth transportation data: spaceport coordinates, arrival and departure routes, and so forth. It is not difficult to calculate the route for a ship departing this port for Tarka Four. We will simply leave now and intercept them on the way.”

“Oh right, with all weapons blazing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't your Valgrindol be traveling in a much larger ship with lots of firepower?”

“Certainly, but we will not be relying on firepower. We will use its opposite.”

“How?”

Tyaak grinned. “What happened to your superstitious human ‘belief and ‘trust'?”

“Oh, so it's ‘Trust me,' is it?” Jamie shrugged and got up to see if she could work the food dispenser herself. “Well, I suppose we've been asked to do a lot crazier things lately.”

Working the controls, Tyaak asked for and received permission from the spaceport to take off; speedily he did so. Jamie, not too pleased with the food bar she'd gotten, returned to her seat and the screen.

She watched London drop away beneath them, the older buildings lit at regularly spaced windows, the newer ones glowing all over like phosphorescent fungus. Then the city was just a patch of light in a dark island, an island surrounded by a darker sea, a sea spanning a dark planet.

Suddenly Jamie realized what she was seeing, and trembled as if she had a fever. That was her planet she was leaving, her home. All she had wanted was to be a little special, to do something her perfect brother couldn't—like maybe see ghosts. She hadn't wanted to go skipping through time, to have powers that terrified as much as they excited her. And she definitely hadn't wanted to leave her world on some space-piracy scheme that would probably mean she'd never see home again. She wondered if her ghost would end up haunting the spaceways some five hundred years after her time. At least if she met people who were looking for ghosts, she could warn them to forget the whole thing.

Jamie was just lying back, trying to relax, when the lights dimmed, the view screens went dead, and the slight trembling of the ship in motion slowed and stopped.

“What's the matter?” she asked in alarm.

Arni punched the lifeless viewscreen controls. “Did I break something?”

“No, I did,” Tyaak replied. “At least I hope it will look like things are broken. The idea is to make this look like a ship in trouble. I have shut down all systems except for minimal life support; then I will damage some repairable reactor parts. When the Valgrindol's ship comes near, I wall trigger a distress call. Space ethics require that the first ship in the vicinity of a vessel in distress stop and help. To save time, they will probably just bring us on board. Then we can steal the staff.”

“Excellent!” Arni cried. “Those are Viking tactics!”

“Just back up a second,” Jamie objected. “What if the first ship to come by isn't the right one?”

“It is almost sure to be. While still in a solar system, ships are required to keep strictly to regulation flight paths. Besides, we should be able to feel the staff when it comes close.”

Jamie wasn't at all sure that would work in empty space but let it pass. What bothered her more was the next matter. “How do we get the staff once we're on the ship? They're not likely to give it to us as a souvenir.”

Arni leaped up from his seat, waving his hand around as if it held a sword. “When Earl Thorfinn sailed away after the battle of Papey Stonsay, he had his men hide until the ship was in port. Then they jumped over the side and attacked Rogenvald's town!”

Tyaak smiled. “That is basically the idea. You two become invisible, and while I deal with the mechanic working on our ship, you find the staff and bring it back.”

Jamie groaned. The number of things wrong with that plan was close to infinite. “But what if—”

“We will just have to do the best we can—unless you have a better idea, of course.”

Sure. Thousands of miles out in space, in a twenty-sixth-century alien spaceship, where she couldn't even make the food dispenser work right. She shrugged. “No, go for it.”

The cabin lights dimmed even further. “All right. No talking or noise now. I will set an alarm to alert us when a ship is approaching so I can trigger the distress call. Everyone just lie back and get some rest.”

Rest, Jamie thought as she lay there tight as a spring. That word and “terror” just didn't go together. She looked over at Arni and was surprised to see him asleep already. Maybe Vikings were used to sleeping before battle.

On her other side, Tyaak seemed to be asleep as well. The bristles of his hair had calmed to a loose cascade. Suddenly she remembered where she'd seen hair that color before. Comic-book characters often had that same blue-black shade. For that matter, comics often did funky things with skin color too, though she hadn't seen them use much avocado green. Now, if only the outcome of all this were as safe and sure as in a comic book. Well, at least imagining the perfect happy ending would give her something to think about while the others slept… .

Jamie slept as well, a chime pulling her from a confusing cloud of dreams. Tyaak was already huddled over some controls, speaking weakly into a receiver.

“… reactor nodes must have fused. All systems are down except for emergency life support, and that is going. I request immediate assistance. I repeat, anyone who can hear this: My primary reactor nodes must have fused. All systems …”

He repeated the message several times, throwing in sound effects by tapping his nails on the speaking grid. Jamie wanted to switch on her screen to see the approaching ship but knew the power was off. She wanted to stand up and pace, but had been told to keep down any noise the other ship's sensors might pick up. Arni was still asleep. Lucky kid.

Frustrated, she lay back and closed her eyes. Could she really tell if the staff were out there? She thought about the other staffs—the soaring black raven in Arni's world, the leaping golden fish in hers. She had felt their power, a warm tingling, a sense of … of what? Of something vast and mighty, just beyond what she could see and touch. Was she feeling a slight brush of that again? Or was it just a memory of the feeling?

In the darkness of her mind, she saw the staff again. Not as it had been, pale under a harsh light, exposed on a cold metal table. Here it was cocooned in fiber and nestled in close, confining darkness. The white arching horse glowed with a faint light of its own. Its warm power touched lightly at the familiar spot in her mind.

Her eyes flew open and she started to speak, but Tyaak shook his head, a hand to his mouth. Nodding, she pointed in the direction from which she now knew the ship was coming.

Quietly Jamie got up and tiptoed to Arni's seat, putting a hand over his mouth so he didn't make a noise when she woke him. Then together they looked around the cabin. With the lights this low, there were many places where darkness could help even imperfect attempts at invisibility. They chose a spot on the far side of the door and crouched down, trying to think about being smooth metal walls and spongy beige floor. Nothing but air and wall and floor. Nothing at all.

Jamie was so into not being there that the sudden clanking startled her. She forced herself to concentrate again, ignoring the scraping sounds and the jarring bump.

Tyaak had been fiddling with something behind one of the wail panels—probably, Jamie realized, trying to fake their technical failure. But now he sprawled himself over his seat like someone running out of air.

There was a tapping and scraping outside; then the door opened. A Kreeth and a Human ran in, helped Tyaak sit up, and gave him some sort of shot.

“Was such a fool,” Tyaak gasped. “Thought this old clunker was up to the trip. Didn't have a checkout first.”

Jamie didn't wait to hear this airhead Kreeth kid bawled out. Still thinking about not being there, she slipped out the open door, assuming Arni was behind her. She couldn't see him. Reaching back, she flailed around until she felt a hand and grabbed it.

She stopped short at the sight of two Kreeth examining Tyaak's ship, but they clearly didn't see her, so she
hurried on. They were apparently inside the rescuers' spaceship, in some large domed hangar. Several other ships larger than Tyaak's were sitting about on the wide metal floor.

When they were well away from anyone else, Jamie heard a voice whisper, “What do we do now? This keeping invisible is hard work.”

She nodded, then realized he couldn't see that. “Agreed. But we'd better keep it up until we have the staff or at least until we're away from people. Any idea where it is?”

“Umm … crowded. A place like this, open, metal. But smaller and … crowded. Lots of things close up. Near the top, though.”

A storeroom maybe, Jamie thought. She wished Tyaak were along; he was better at sensing directions. But he was busy giving her and Arni the time they needed, so they'd better not waste it.