Timegods' World (79 page)
Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy
Verdis’s plotting had probably forced the issue. She wanted me to support some tech-based internal reform or revolution, and that was the last thing the Tribunes, or Heimdall, or Gilmesh wanted. By trying to arrest me, Heimdall or the Tribunes removed me one way or another. They probably had my own words on Frey’s incompetence recorded somewhere, as well as Verdis’s assessment of my complicity. I either got sentenced to Hell or left the Guard to wander in the outer reaches of some part of our galaxy. Either way, their empire would remain intact.
I shook my head. That was what they thought. The time for dreaming and speculation was past, and so were the times for scheming and plotting. As I thought, I changed from the black Guard jumpsuit into something else, glancing down at the river and the deep canyons. I needed to hurry, before they mounted enough equipment to break into the Aerie—if they could or would.
With a start, I realized I had changed into a totally red outfit. That fit. I would challenge the fires of time, perhaps whatever gods of time might be, and red was my color … red for the fires that burned within.
THE NAME AT the top of my list was Altara IV, supposedly the planet where time-changes would be the easiest to make. The natives called it Rephala, later in their parahistory.
Wrist gauntlets fully powered, eternasteel tablets in the carrying case slung under my shoulder, I squared myself for the first of the timedives with which I would wrench Query’s history into a different mold.
I slipped into the undertime with scarcely a ripple, hardly aware of the mind-chill.
The backtime for which I was diving contained a turning point. All histories have them, a place where an “almost” culture might have emerged. Given a push at the right times, or a mailed fist on the opposition, the prognosis for events leading to a high-tech development was favorable.
On Altara IV a bronze age evolution on the small island continent had been wiped out by the invasions of a barbaric bunch of ax-wielders who outnumbered the lizard people of the island ten to one. The barbarians hadn’t even bothered to stay on the island, but had eaten everything, looted, and departed rather than work at agriculture and silvaculture.
My first breakout was to locate the barbarian encampment. After three scans through likely twilights, I found campfires scattered around the sandbars and the twisting land bridge that led over the horizon to the land I had chosen to protect.
With a skip, flick, flick, flick through the undertime, I centered on the narrowest segment of the unstable rock and sand that composed the causeway.
The destruction was simple enough. I pushed the small antimatter cube out into the now at the proper juncture of fault lines and shifting rock and retreated into the sky and the now to watch. The sand shifted; a line of fire spewed heavenward; the sand and grass sank; and the waters rushed into the new channel that would block the island continent from the mainland.
And I flamed into view over the camps of the ax-wielders.
AND IN THE twilight appeared the god of fire to his people, and thence to their enemies. The lightnings were his cloak, and the sparks dropped like the rains of winter, and the enemies of his people knew him not, for the god of fire had long been absent from his place.
The multitudes of the enemy did not bow down, nor did they cover their eyes, nor show any sign of respect.
And the god of fire was angered, and his lightnings, they rained upon the unbelievers, and few were spared. Few of the males, or the females, or the neuters, or the children.
Their screams spread upon the night and were not heard, for they had not believed. They had seen and not seen; they had been shown God and did not worship.
The night was as day, and the lightnings struck the land as the hammers of the smith pound upon the forge, and there was heat, and many of the waters bubbled and seethed.
And the people of the island, the chosen ones, kneeled upon hard rocks and marveled, and their tails were stilled, and they were amazed. By the hammers of God were they astounded, and they worshipped, and then, then did the god of fire depart.
WITH A SHIVER, I slid undertime along the chill wind of the time-change I had created, riding the creaking surges forward.
A city shimmered with lights, beckoning through the time-tension barrier.
I answered the call and broke out.
The city section I saw first was squalid even in the night, gas lights
throwing shadows across low stone huts. But where gas lights existed, so did emerging technology.
throwing shadows across low stone huts. But where gas lights existed, so did emerging technology.
I skip-slid into the following day and toward the harbor, looking for a warship, certain of finding one.
Not one, but a squadron, small fleet, powered by some sort of fire-steam system, attested to by the smokestacks. Crude metal plating and gun ports proclaimed they were intended for combat.
THE GOD OF time and fire arose from his slumbers, and in the twilight of that evening gathered his thunderbolts that the ships of that king, and the pride of that people, be brought down to the fishes of the sea, and along with the vessels, also the soldiers and sailors who defied the god of time by their blasphemies.
For no harbor was yet safe from God, and no city escaped his judgment of fire; and his judgment was, and it was that the warships of the sea should be no longer. And raised he his mighty arm and collected the flames of the sun and the lightnings of the storms and once more, as he had in the past, made the night as day, and brighter than noontime it was as the fires fell from the heavens unto the ships and the waters. And the ships were no more.
The people were sore afraid and remembered the tales of old and the prophecies they had mocked, and they prostrated themselves before their god and prayed for his forgiveness.
Unto them who prayed was their god merciful and upon the black rock by the waters which still seethed gave unto his people his holy tablet, and departed then the god of fire upon the lightnings and the flames.
WHERE ONE FLEET sailed must have sailed another, if not several, and I began a quick slide-search of Altara IV. In my haste I was not strictly impartial, searching only for warships of apparently different origin.
AND UNTO THE enemies of his people visited also the god of fire and rained upon their vessels also the fires of the sun and the lightnings of the storm. And those vessels also perished.
THE CHANGE WINDS around Altara IV moaned more loudly as history changed into parahistory and parahistory became history, even as I rode those winds forward into time, looking as I was from the undertime for the signposts of development.
I whisked through local centuries to break from the undertime into objective time. Differences were evident, with canals, intensive cultivation, and the lines of what might have been quick-transit systems all visible from my commanding view. Those were not what I needed.
I slid undertime and scanned the planet, hunting for the energy concentrations that must have existed. They did.
Three power plants were ideally spaced, and I girded myself for the next step.
FOR IN THEIR pride, his people had builded themselves towers to store the fires of the sun and to trap the lightnings of the storms, and to have each do their bidding.
And they said, we are like the god of our fathers, mastering the fires of the sun and the lightnings of the storms, and flying like the eagles, and there was no god, but only foolish writings of ignorant peoples.
And for this arrogance, the god of fire was displeased, and in the space of an instant hurled down the towers of power, and they were stone and dust.
Yet the people were still proud, and in their pride, dared their god and the heavens. And, behold, they crossed the skies faster than eagles, and their craft of the air made the sun stand motionless in its course.
And a craft of the air approached the god of fire even as he had toppled the towers and flew nigh unto the god and turned not.
The almighty one drew unto himself, and from the thunderbolts of the storm made first a signal; so might all the peoples of the earth know his displeasure, and the red of his fires surpassed the green of the sky.
And those who had forgotten recalled again the tales of their god, and trembled, and were fearful.
Another sign displayed the god, and yet another, for to warn that flier who had dared the heavens after the fashion of his fellows and challenged the god of fire. But the defiant one struck at God with an arrow of flame.
And God was angered and turned upon the flier, and the defiant one then fled, faster than the sun itself. But the lord of fire suffered not that his erring servant should escape, and he gathered unto him his flames greater than the sun of the noon, and cast down the defiant one.
Many feared, yet saw not. Because the people did fear and did see with their eyes, but understood not what they saw, the god went to the high place of his peoples where gathered the most mighty, and so cast it down, making the hills like plains, flat and smooth as the finest ice, and in the center of that holy place, left the last of his holy tablets that his people might read, and reading, might learn what was to lie before them.
DEPARTING IN A column of flame, I rode the screaming, wrenching change winds for parainstants before racing ahead, back to Query, back to my Aerie.
I shuddered, but I dared not feel for those who had suffered … not and redress the balance of Time.
Standing over the cliffs, my Aerie seemed poised over the canyon of destruction, but I knew it was all illusion.
My power packs were dead, and I replaced them, not that I was sure I even needed them longer, tapping as I was the energy underlying the now.
My supply of miniature antimatter bombs was depleted, and I restocked.
One gauntlet was fused, and the skin beneath red and tender, and I willed it to heal, and it did.
I looked around my Aerie, my weapons storeroom, cluttered and jumbled with implements of destruction, before setting out for the second wrench I would make in the machinery of time.
I replaced the eternasteel tablets with their message, star chart, and formula in my carrying case, pulled on another gauntlet over my healed right wrist.
Three swigs of firejuice, a battle ration cube, and I was prepared to dive. Rationally, I knew that much of the sustenance, except for the liquids, was unnecessary, but it made me feel better. Already I could sense the change winds in the back distance over the curve of time, blowing ahead of the now toward Query, and I knew I had much to do before they arrived with their messages.
After a stint as the Lord of Destruction I would become the Lord of Creation, before I donned the mantle of Destruction again.
I time-dived and slid out the black branches into the backtime, three hundred centuries or so, and out to Heaven IV.
Heaven IV was not on any printout I had gotten from the data banks. That alone might have kept Freyda, Eranas, Kranos, and Heimdall buffeting in the change winds, even if they had copies of the list.
I forced my way down the backtime paths toward the planet of the angels, with a specific aim in mind—an angel nursery. With a sense of feel and three quick slides across the blue heavens, I located it.
Although the term “nursery” sounded formal, it wasn’t, because the place was more of a sheltered cliff on one of the tallest peaks I’d ever seen, but overlooking, as always, the goblin’s hell smoldering far below under the dark clouds and seething heat.
FOR THE GOD of fire and time had come unto the place called Heaven, to take his due from the angels and from that mount where the children were gathered.
Yet a single angel protested and raised his lance against the god of fire, and that angel was no more, for against the thunderbolts of the god he could not prevail.
And from that place called Heaven the god of fire departed, time and time again, carrying the children, two by two, to a far place that is strange no more, but was strange unto them, until he had gathered there two score and more.
And to guard them, against the cold and against danger, further provided were they with angels to succor them, for they grieved and their hearts were heavy, and they were alone.
THE PLANET ON which I had placed the uprooted angels had a slightly heavier gravity than Heaven IV, and the atmosphere was thinner. Intelligent life had not yet evolved, but my data indicated the biosystems were compatible.
Statistically, it was a long shot, but I knew it would work out. That is the business of gods.
Flying would not work well, except for short distances, and more metal meant a tech culture.
That I did not intend to leave to chance. I slid foretime on the first murmur of the second change wind I had blown into our stuffy corner of the galaxy.
Twenty centuries up were towns, small cities, boats, and beasts of burden, fires—enough for a first appearance.
I lit up the sky at twilight over the square of a town, cast a few thunderbolts into the town center, and deposited a tablet.
After repeating the performance over a more distant village, I then departed up the line. I did not expect much more from the change wind, but the murmurs were swelling as I rode forward, peering from the undertime at the changing surface of the planet.
At fifty centuries foretime from the objective time of the transplant, I found iron ships upon the shallow oceans and laden power wagons upon the roads.
AND THE FALLEN angels had prospered, but in their prosperity had disregarded the words of their god and had taken up new ways, and sailed the seas in ships of metal and turned the soil with metal beasts, and had in truth forgotten their god.
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