Vestiges of Time (6 page)

should even ask. “And what of you, Harkos? What have you told them?”

I shrugged. “Nothing yet. They’ve given me time to think it over and make up my mind.”

“I hope that you will agree to join us,” she said earnestly, looking at me with a frank, open expression. “Such a man as you is needed. NakrehVatee isn’t famous for its soldiers.”

“Yeah, so I’ve gathered.”

“And you would be doing the people a great service,” she said just as earnestly, though not so fanatically as AkweNema might have said it. “There is much that AkweNema and KaphNo and the lord DessaTyso would do to make things better for the people, but they need help.”

“Is it necessarily
my
help?”

“It could be your help. And the rewards will be great, although the knowledge that one has done the right thing should be enough.” There was a gentle chiding in her voice, I thought.

“But NakrehVatee isn’t my country,” I told her, “and its problems aren’t mine.”

“Are you so much of a barbarian that you owe no debt to your fellow man?”

“I have some pressing things to attend to, EnDera. I’m not sure I can spare a year or two to assist your people.”

She looked doubtfully at me. “That pressing?”

I nodded, though I wondered where I’d ever have another chance to get my hands on a time—correction, on a chronal-displacement device. I just might have to give them a year or two to get it. And maybe that’s what the Shadowy Man had been hinting at.

Another thought that had been nagging just below my level of awareness surfaced now, and I put the question to her as she refilled our now-empty wineglasses.

“Look, maybe you can answer something for me.” “I’ll try.”

“Well, for the sake of argument, suppose I do agree to go along and give up a couple of years of my life to help the BrathelLanza. Okay, we’re speaking of maybe a year to complete the training and the preparation of the revolutionaries and then some months of fighting until the BrathelLanza has crushed all government resistance, right?”

EnDera nodded. “That’s about right.”

“Okay, then, how can this army of clones—replicates, whatever—that they’re talking about ‘growing’ from cells of my body possibly be ready in time to do any good? It takes almost two decades for a human being to become anything like mature. Are they planning on sending year-old babies out to fight a war?”

She laughed, but gently. “KaphNo is getting old, Harkos. He didn’t mention the GATs—growth-accel- eration techniques—they’ve been using on
anim
al and on some human replicates?”

“GATs?—no, I don’t think so.”

“He will. But it’s true that the BrathelLanza now has techniques that the government’s scientists and medical people know nothing about which can greatly hasten the acceleration of maturation.”

“Hasten it enough to ‘grow’ an adult army in a year?”

“In less than a year.”

“Okay,” I said grudgingly.

“I’m certain that KaphNo will tell you all about it. You’ll see.”

I shrugged. There was a hell of a lot I had yet to learn about this world—for it was a oomplete world with centuries of history behind it about which I knew next to nothing, with patterns of culture I’d had only glimpses of, with technology and techniques I had encountered nowhere else across the Lines of Time. It

would take a very long time for me to feel at home in it, if I ever did, and I knew I couldn’t wait
that long
to make up my mind. I had to come to a decision on the basis of very scanty data and to act on that decision—and I had begun to doubt very seriously that with a negative decision on my part I would ever be allowed to leave the Underground alive. But I wasn’t telling anyone anything yet.

“We want your stay here to be as pleasant as it can be,” EnDera said into my silent thoughts.

“And that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “You were told to expect a reward, weren’t you?”

“I was. And you’re it?”

“I’m it. Or rather the first one. There will be many more rewards, of various types, to follow, if you decide to join us.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if I’m really going to be allowed any choice in the matter.”

EnDera refilled both our wineglasses, took them in her hands, and rose slowly, gracefully from the floor.

“Let me show you the rest of the suite,” she said as she turned her back on me, and I let my eyes follow the sweep of her dark hair down the curves of her back and hips to her ankles and feet. “It was carefully prepared for you. We hope you will find it comfortable.”

She led me down a short hallway that branched off to two rooms, the one on the right a dining-room- cum-kitchen with what appeared to be automated food- preparation equipment, which she oflered to show me how to operate—later. The room to the left was a study complete with a small library of books, a library of disks and tapes and playing machines for them, and one wall that was some sort of holographic-projection unit that could re-create life-size three-dimensional dramas, comedies, concerts, and readings. Again she

offered to show me how to operate the equipment— but later.

The doors at the rear of these rooms led to hallways that joined and then in turn branched again and led to two more rooms, one a toilet with an enormous sunken bathtub, more nearly a pool; the other was a recreation room, in all appearances, fully outfitted with games, exercise equipment, and even a rifle range.

The rear doors of these rooms led to a common hallway that finally ended in a huge bedroom—literally a
bedroom,
for its entire floor was a single great mattress that reached from wall to wall. A mahogany-paneled console stood in the middle of the room under a circular illumination disk surrounded by mirrors that covered the remainder of the ceiling. EnDera didn’t have to tell me what the mirrors were for, but she did tell me that the console was a combination wet bar, entertainment center with holotank, and clothes closet. She opened one panel of the console to show me the costumes it held for me, an assortment of outfits that included, among other things, a harshly cut uniform that had a very, very military look about it. They were prepared, I could say that about them, these people of the BrathelLanza.

And so was EnDera.

“Now,” she said, lowering herself to the mattress- floor, having kicked off her shoes as we entered the room, as I had done also, “I will try to convince you of the wisdom of joining us.”

“Okay,” I said, a huskiness suddenly coming to my throat.

She handed me one of the glasses filled with wine. Despite all I’d already drunk that evening, I felt I needed that one too.

“Come join
me,
Master HarkosNor,” EnDera said softly, one hand holding the wineglass, the other going to the fasteners that held her gown together in the back. “I think I can at least persuade you to do
that.”

The gown fell away from her breasts and crumpled around her hips. She began to work herself out of it.

“Yes, you can do that,” I said, and lowered myself beside her.

She did persuade me.

Of Replication

When I awoke the next morning, my mouth filled with the unpleasant aftertaste and thickness of too much wine consumed the night before, and an incipient headache, I found that EnDera was way ahead of me. She had already been up for a while and there was a hot breakfast awaiting me, complete with a steaming cup of coffee—the most inviting thing I saw at the breakfast table, except for EnDera herself, who now wore only a lacy apron that was hardly a covering and couldn’t have been much protection against anything, and a bright flower with yellow petals in the darkness of her long hair. Her welcoming smile was as bright as the flower she wore.

“Did you sleep well, my lord Harkos?”

“The sleep of the just and guilt-free,” I said with a touch of sarcasm I don’t think I really meant—at least I didn’t mean for the sarcasm to be aimed at EnDera.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I said, and sat down at the table, now realizing how hungry I was.

“The lord DessaTyso, AkweNema, and KaphNo will be coming to see you soon,” she said as we ate. “Akwe punched up before you awoke to check on you.”

I nodded, with a mouthful of food, but made no effort to speak.

“Akwe was hoping that you’d come to a decision and would speak with them of it this morning.”

I nodded again, and sipped the hot coffee.

“Well, have you?”

After swallowing the coffee and gesturing for En-
52

Dera to refill the cup, I said: “Last night I said I didn’t think I was really being given much choice in the matter.”

“That’s what you said.”

“Well, I’m not. Am I?”

“Certainly you are. Nobody’s forcing you to do anything.” Was there a mocking smile barely hidden by her composed features?

“Tell me, frankly, what would happen to me if I refused.”

She looked at me with a blank expression for long seconds.

I sipped hot coffee again. “Come on, tell me.”

“Honestly, Harkos, I don’t know, but. .

“Ah!” I wagged a finger at her. “If the BrathelLanza is a secret revolutionary organization, as it obviously is, and if the existing government is out to crush all such revolutionary movements, as it obviously must if it is to remain in power, then is AkweNema—the brains behind this revolution, as he seems to be—is he going to turn me, a potential government informer, loose to tell all I know to the government in possible exchange for ‘rewards’ from
them?”
That was some mouthful to speak that early in the morning, especially since I’d just scalded my tongue with coffee.

EnDera shook her head. “I don’t know exactly what they would do in that case.” Her eyes seemed to say otherwise.

“I don’t know
exactly,
either, but if I were in Akwe- Nema’s shoes, I could think of several things—but none of them would be very pleasant for Master HarkosNor, soldier at arms and intrepid hero.”

“I see what you’re saying.”

“It’s got to be the old carrot-and-stick game, EnDera.” I paused, gave her a long, hard, questioning look that somehow evolved into a leer. “And to tell you the truth, my dear, I much prefer the carrot to the stick, one particular carrot indeed.”

At this she broke into a reluctant smile. “Then you’re going to accept?”

“Like I said, do I have any choice?”

When AkweNema and KaphNo led me deeper into the underground complex of the BrathelLanza and began showing me the various parts of it, I was reminded of another underground complex on another Earth, distant across the Lines from this one, and of the people there who had also been plotting a revolution, colonial North America scheming to rise against Mother England. But that place .no longer existed; destroyed by its builders to prevent its capture by the people who came to rescue me from them. And now Sally was waiting for me Somewhere Else. And I missed her and wondered when I would ever see her again.

Portions of the Underground here were devoted to offices and to sleeping quarters for both the permanently subterranean personnel and those who worked and partially lived in the world above and came into the Underground only on occasion, such as AkweNema and the lord DessaTyso, who still had active parts to play in the society of the surface. Farther back, the offices and quarters gave way to supply dumps, to equipment and materiel they were slowly collecting, building, enlarging, in preparation for the day when the BrathelLanza and its allies w
o
uld come out of their hidden places and attack the power structure that ruled NakrehVatee.

Still farther on were large, brightly lighted exercise areas and drill fields carved out of the earth and stone, in which was completed the training of the cadres that would soon issue forth to begin the training of others around the nation. The uniforms they wore, the men and women who were presently the crack forces of the BrathelLanza, were not greatly unlike those worn by the armies of many another world: blouses and slacks

of tan—khaki, the word was in some places—metal helmets, heavy boots; and the weapons with which they exercised were bright and sparkling, highly sophisticated automatic rifles and pistols capable of throwing leaden slugs or explosive shells great distances with a high degree of accuracy, compact particle-beam weapons and hand-held lasers capable of projecting fragments of shattered atoms, electrons, protons, beams of coherent light and heat. Unfortunately, however, the soldiers were not as sophisticated as their weapons. But then, I suppose, that’s why they wanted someone like me.

And beyond the training areas lay the biological laboratories. This was where I would be occupied initially. Only later would I be spending the bulk of my time in the training areas, drilling
my
troops and advising the training of others.

We entered the bright, antiseptic labs, smelled the clean, almost sterile air, watched the efficient movements of the physicians and scientists and technicians as they went about their esoteric business—esoteric to me; but now I could see that old KaphNo was finally in his element. He seemed a different man, alive, excited, animated by his love for the laboratories and what was taking place in them.

“Everything is ready for you, Master HarkosNor— or should I say ‘General’ HarkosNor?” KaphNo said, beaming at me. “We could even begin today if you wish.” He paused for a moment, ruminated. “We have several human replicates, which you will see later, in various stages of maturation, developing with no indication of trouble.

“In fact,” he said, speaking more slowly, more emphatically, “we even have several fully matured replicates living in the Underground now. You would not be able to distinguish them from other people—in fact, I’ll see that you meet one of them soon, and you can see for yourself what I mean.