Time Past (44 page)

A large figure blocked the path ahead.

“An Serat,” I called, not wanting to approach him suddenly from behind. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t turn, or acknowledge me, other than to say, “Go away.”

I approached a few more steps. “You need to stop whatever you’re doing to this system. You’re causing it to malfunction and you threaten the lives of people who live here.” We’d attached color-coded tags to the functions Engineering accessed regularly, and this one was purple and green. Tiny traceries of energy skittered across the surface.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I inquire further.” The voicebox translated his next word as something like “Tranoradariana,” but that couldn’t have been right.

“I don’t know that name,” I interrupted. “Please explain.”

“Whom you know as Tor. They are here.”

“No, they’re not. We overlaid it.”

The Tor hardware contained the necessary directions for its use, in the same way directions for biological entities like ourselves are encoded in our DNA. When building Jo-casta, the challenge was to replace—overwrite—change the Tor directions to Invidi-derived Confederacy codes. If An Serat found any areas where he could reactivate the Tor directions, the entire station was in trouble. We’d have to evacuate if we couldn’t keep our opsys “clean” of Tor elements.

An Serat rocked once. “I have methods you cannot comprehend.”

“Maybe. But I helped build the station and I know what we did.”

“I know Tor. You and your limited stature cannot overcome them.”

I thought of the gray Tor ship with its programmed trap that had snapped down on the unwary Seouras. The direct strength of that ship overwhelmed me after a few seconds’ resistance. No wonder it had taken the Invidi decades to defeat them. If An Serat had spent years restricting a Tor opsys so that it would not take over his Invidi systems, he was every bit as clever as his boast.

I couldn’t imagine how to use Tor elements, which was why I’d abandoned the idea of doing anything like that with
Farseer.
Tor codes were too quick to exploit weakness, too complete in their takeover of other systems.

“If you stay, ConFleet will soon fight their way past the Q’Chn at the jump point and they’ll take this ship away from you again.”

“I am right. They are wrong. Your arrival is evidence.”

“Arrival where?”

“On your world.”

It hit me what he was talking about, along with a great desire to know the answer. “You mean why I arrived before the Invidi came to Earth.”

“Tor drag back
Calypso.
Tor have the power. I say this to Barik.” His voicebox sounded eerily triumphant.

“Tor drag back...” The gray ships of the Seouras blockade were here in 2122 when
Calypso
arrived from 2027. If they somehow diverted
Calypso
when it went through the jump point and brought it to 2122, it would look like the jump had a ninety-five-year correspondence. But if the ninety-nine-year jump was also dragged back into the past the same distance, it would explain how I could emerge in 2023, not 2027 when I went back the other way in
Calypso II.

“You mean the Tor moved the points so
Calypso
arrived in 2122?”

“I say this.”

“Why?”

No answer. Maybe the Tor wanted Serat’s hybrid ship as much as Barik did. But they were too early for
Farseer.
I wished I had a holo-diagram to work this out. Serat did send
Calypso
into a ninety-nine-year jump point after all. That point got skewed back four years, so that it linked 2122 and 2023 instead of 2027 and 2126. Then I went back through it to Earth in
Calypso II
and to Jocasta in
Farseer
... no, what about that radiation surge on 16 May? And what about the slightly different coordinates? There must be two sets of points, side by side. At least, for two days until the surge disables one set.

“Did
Farseer
open a new jump point between Earth and Jocasta?”

“You use the work.” His voicebox sounded distracted.

“You must have noticed one of the points destabilized or did something that sent off a radiation surge. Does that mean one of the pairs is inactive?”

No answer.

“An Serat, please stop interacting with our opsys. What are you trying to do, anyway?”

If he could open jumps, he could set up his own jump network. One that owed nothing to the Confederacy and kept moving where he wished. If the New Council ever found out about
Farseer
and the points, this is what they would aim to use it for. Yet somehow I doubted it was An Serat’s aim.

“I can go there.”

“Where?”

“You use my ship. It takes you into the place of no paths and all paths.”

I’d had strange dreams when I used
Farseer.
But certainly not... eternity. Disappointment weighed my voice low.

“I did not experience that place. At least, not so I noticed.”

His tentacles twirled. “Of course. To expect that a species of your limited...”

“An Barik said that using
Farseer
will destabilize space-time.”

“Barik is wrong.”

“Why should I believe you and not him?” Some small, unworthy part of me wanted to get back at him for his being able to get so much more from
Farseer
than I did. Inferior species, right.

“Is your ‘spacetime’ disrupted?”

The blunt, pragmatic question took me by surprise. I said nothing.

To my further surprise, he continued, “Barik does not understand. The others do not understand. Tor power can work with Invidi. Become, as you say, greater than the two added.”

“The sum of the whole being greater than the parts? But when we built the station, we had to override the Tor directives because their entire existence is based on taking over other technology when they find it. It’s encoded in every matrix of every strand of every material. You either get rid of it or you succumb to it. We found no middle way.”

“You are not Invidi. You do not have the ability or power.”

“Then how did I use the ship?”

“Other species can use Tor ships as they will. This function is not desirable.” His tentacles resumed their delicate tracing of the opsys surface and he glided farther into the core, losing interest abruptly and completely.

I followed him another twenty meters or so along the walkway. When I glanced back, the yellow light from the crawler shaft was half cut off by the curve of the core.

“An Serat, you must stop. Please stop. You are damaging our life support.”

No answer.

“We’ll try to find you the material somewhere else.” When he still didn’t answer, I edged closer and tapped on the railing next to him. “Listen to me. We’ve probably got some untouched Tor junk stored somewhere. Bits of jump mines, booby-trapped asteroids. Can’t you use... ?”

I didn’t feel anything. A quick flash of light that I thought came from something Serat was doing to the opsys, then I was flat on my face on the walkway.

The metal strips pushed cold and hard into my cheekbone and my left arm was jammed under my ribs. Against it my heart beat huge and irregular and I was gasping for breath that wouldn’t come.

What the hell?

Breathe in. Out.

For what seemed like hours all I could focus on was getting air and staying still to give my body a chance to catch up with what happened. Like recovering from an asthma attack. No idea what was going on. It took a while to register that the filigree of shifting twinkles to the right of my vision was in fact the opsys core, out of focus. On Jocasta. Where I’d been talking to An Serat.

The lights sharpened into focus and I lifted my head and peered along the walkway. Nothing but the eerie pale light and the metal strips curving out of sight. Had he gone? I pushed myself to a sitting position and looked back the other way, wincing at the stiffness in my neck. There he was, rolling slowly along the walkway toward the crawler shaft, sampling bits of the opsys as he went. He must have shoved me to the side to get past.

I sat sprawled on the walkway, astounded.

Attacked by an Invidi. Nobody had ever been attacked by an Invidi. Not personally. We never knew they would do that. Was it a weapon? Did Serat generate the charge naturally? An electric shock, by my heart’s reaction and the way my legs and arms were twitching.

A hostile Invidi. We’ve never had to deal with a hostile Invidi before.

“Why did you do that?” I called out, as loud as I could.

His tentacles stilled, but he said nothing.

“I thought Invidi did not harm others,” I said.

“I am not like others.”

“Why not?”

“I comprehend the liberation of action. Acting frees me from the cage of knowing.”

“I don’t understand.”

Serat rocked and the walkway vibrated under my seat bones.

“Action clouds the paths,” he said. “I cannot see the web. I gain freedom.”

“But you lose your future sight. How can you function?”

“As you do.”

“Like an inferior species?”

He didn’t answer and glided onto the ramp, out the entry hatch into the crawler shaft. I caught a glimpse of how he somehow half heaved, half rolled up the step onto the corridor wall-floor surface. I couldn’t see if he was still there and my legs and arms shook uselessly when I tried to stand up.

A gentle hum overhead indicated the crawler was still functioning. Its bulk blocked out the yellow light for a moment, then zoomed on. When I finally organized my limbs enough to crawl forward, An Serat had gone.

We knew he was in conflict with the other Invidi, represented by An Barik and the Confederacy. They wanted him and
Farseer,
because he’d broken their rules, or gone too far, whether the explanation Barik gave me about damaging spacetime was the whole story or not. But so far Serat had behaved more or less like an Invidi. If what he said about acting was true, if he was unconstrained by whatever morality had kept the Invidi non-interfering until now, we were in deep trouble. Nobody had rules for dealing with hostile Invidi—we never knew we needed any.

The next forty minutes were some of the most frustrating in my entire experience. The comm system was still down and I couldn’t contact Murdoch to confirm if Venner had kept her word and called off the Q’Chn. Nor could I call Engineering for backup, or ask anyone if they’d seen where An Serat had gone. From the state of the opsys as a whole, it looked like he had left the core. What if he’d gone to
Farseer
and left the station?

If we keep
Farseer
here we’re damned because Serat and therefore the New Council and their Q’Chn won’t leave. And we’re damned if we let
Farseer
go and Serat uses it.

Shortly after An Serat disappeared, a bored-looking New Council spacer looked down from the crawler hatch. Male, cropped gray hair, full-face tattoos. He grunted when he saw me and sat down to wait until I finished.

I concentrated on the closest communication subsystem node, using a toolkit taken from the maintenance alcove in the crawler shaft. Halfway through, the gravity switched off and I wasted long minutes chasing tools and trying to find the end of a lead that floated out of sight behind a raised section of panel.

My guard amused himself by hooking his feet in the top of the door frame and doing micro-grav exercises. His red face appeared now and then in the half-circle of ordinary light that was the crawler shaft.

Finally I set up a comm link to the Bubble, then to Lieutenant Gamet. I explained where I was and what I’d done so far, ignoring the New Council crew member listening outside the tunnel.

“The New Council captain agreed to let three people up here,” I said to Gamet. “Make sure you use the maintenance shafts and bring hand-sensors because the main ones aren’t working.”

I hoped they’d be all right, but what choice did we have? The opsys must be kept running or everyone died. I dropped my voice. “She wants you unarmed, but that’s your choice. Leave any weapons on standby, though.”

Understood,
said Gamet.
How does it look?

“A lot of connections are out. But I haven’t been up here for a long time. Could be part of our usual attrition. The environmentals shouldn’t be any trouble, reinitialize them from each ring.”

The uplifts are running normally again. We just had a message from Alpha.

The connection wasn’t good enough to pick up subtleties, but her voice held too much tension.

“What’s wrong? Are the Q’Chn... ?”

The Q’Chn started to come down, then went back up to the center, so we thought the captain had talked them out of it. That was nearly an hour ago.

While I was talking to Venner. Murdoch had said the Q’Chn were on their way down.

Then a minute ago, the Section Two uplift went straight down again. The biosignals were pretty clear. Two of them. Looks like the New Council can’t control them.

Damn Venner. So much for H’digh promises. Or she really couldn’t control the Q’Chn.

Commander? I’m sending my team up now in the Section Five uplift to keep on with the work, if you want to go down.

“Thanks, Barbara. I’ll get down there now.”

We’ll handle the core.

Thirty-three

I
wanted to go and talk to Venner first, to try and persuade her to do something about the Q’Chn, but the guard wouldn’t let me into the dock lobby. Over my protests, he ushered me to the uplift with prods from his rifle. I didn’t know whether this meant Venner was busy trying to control the Q’Chn, or didn’t care what they did, or was avoiding me because of the loss of face involved in admitting she couldn’t control them.

The uplift had never been so slow. Murdoch’s comm link put me on hold. I reached Sasaki instead.

“Talk to me, Helen.”

Commander, your exit’s going to open in Section Three. Section Two is emergency sealed. We have two Q’Chn active in there. Two K’Cher and four Melot are trapped in the Trade Hall.

The Trade Hall was about halfway along the section. Too far to make a quick run for the uplift and safety.