Time's Chariot Read online

  'No,' he said, 'they all have work to do.' And Daiho, the one whom Scott did regard as a colleague, had made it quite clear that he disapproved of Scott going off on this trip. The problem with some College people was that they couldn't imagine transference actually being any fun.

  'But you don't?'

  'The youngsters are our technicians, Mr Daiho is our . . .' Scott paused for thought. What exactly was Daiho in the set-up? 'Our philosopher. I'm management and this is by way of getting to know our hosts. Good relations.'

  'Naturally.'

  The second course came. 'This is steak of ostrich,' Carradine said. 'That's a large bird . . .'

  'I do know what an ostrich is,' Scott said, twisting his mouth in a smile to take any sting out of his words.

  'I'd thought they might be extinct by your time.'

  'Nothing's extinct in the Home Time,' Scott said, and let Carradine work it out for himself. After a couple of moments the man groaned.

  'Duh, of course,' he said. 'I wasn't thinking. Presumably you regularly tuck into filet au brontosaurus and woolly mammoth steak?'

  'Saurians are too oily for my taste,' Scott said.

  'Mr Scott, you have a lovely way with one-liners,' said Carradine. 'I suppose I never really got rid of my childhood idea that the people of the future would dine out on a single pill that could last for a week. Lousy science, of course, but it caught my imagination.'

  'Why on earth would they do that?' Scott laughed in genuine disbelief. Carradine chuckled too, and they commenced their attack on the ostrich.

  Carradine's former companion appeared by Carradine's side with a small, rectangular plastic box in his hand. Scott looked at him curiously. The man had been at a neighbouring table all the time they had been there but he had vanished from Scott's perception the moment Carradine asked him about the flight. It was hard to notice him – he was discretion personified. The perfect assistant.

  The man whispered into Carradine's ear and handed him the device.

  'Thank you, Alan,' Carradine said, and held the box to the side of his face. He spoke into its lower end.

  'Carradine.' His eyes widened and his jaw dropped; then he looked up at the ceiling. 'Oh, Christ. Right. Yes, I'll see to it.'

  Scott was waiting, knife and fork poised.

  Carradine looked at him, annoyance and amusement competing with each other in his expression. 'Trouble up't'mill,' he said.

  'I'm sorry?'

  'Trouble back at the hotel.'

  'Back to work,' said Mr Daiho. He stood up, took a final swig from his glass of water and left the dining room. From their journeyman's table at the other end of the room – just eating in the same room as the other two had been a mental wrench that none of them had enjoyed, and Mr Scott had made his displeasure quite obvious – Sarai and Jontan looked at each other. Then they silently pushed back their chairs and stood too.

  They hadn't had much time to talk since the walk, but just before they went through the door Sarai's hand sought his and gave it a squeeze. He risked a quick squeeze and a smile in return, before they left the room a chaste two feet apart and the model of journeyman propriety.

  The kit was of course as they had left it, since it was surrounded by a forcefield that could only be symbed off. Mr Daiho had already done this and was settling on to his couch.

  'Take your places,' he said. They sat down in their respective chairs and symbed into the systems, with the usual mental jostle for a symb frequency not being used by the others. Representations of nutrient levels and energy flows filled Jontan's mind. Then Mr Daiho activated his field computer to make some fine adjustments, shut his eyes and settled back on the couch. The evening session had begun.

  Jontan stole a glance to his right: Sarai's eyes were half shut as she symbed. He reached out and laid a gentle hand on her knee. She covered it with her own hand, but didn't make any effort to remove it. Nor did she look at him.

  So Jontan let his gaze roam over the kit, while half his mind continued to monitor the signals it was sending. One of the popular entertainment shows displayed in that box in the lounge, he had gathered, was meant to be set in the future and the kit there was covered with flashing lights. The reality that they had brought with them was a collection of abstract boxes with not a flashing light to be seen, except for the row of seventeen red crystals that glowed with an inner light. Unlike Mr Daiho and his symb connection, they were physically connected to the main culture tank – a large flattened oval as long as an adult. What was going on in there was anyone's guess. Jontan only knew that it was some form of biological activity, coordinated by Mr Daiho, and it was his and Sarai's job to keep the culture alive and healthy.

  'Watch it,' said Sarai.

  'Got it,' he said. Levels of feeder-A were dropping in the tank. He had to get a bottle from one of the crates they had brought with them and physically top up the contents.

  'What's it for?' he murmured as he sat back down again.

  Sarai spoke but didn't answer the question. 'I'll check that valve when he's done with this session. The field's out of sync.'

  'Oh, yeah.' A symb image of the set-up showed Jontan what Sarai meant. He glanced again at Sarai and, with Mr Scott absent and Mr Daiho under the hood, decided that at last he would say what he had been thinking for so long. 'Sa?'

  'Yes?'

  'The College doesn't know we're here, does it?'

  Now she actually looked at him, and he felt a paradoxical relief to see his own anxiety mirrored in her eyes and in her heavy sigh. 'A College man sent us here,' she said, which he suspected was her way of saying she knew exactly what he was getting at but wasn't going to admit it.

  'Yeah, but at school they said every trip should be accompanied by Field Ops, and I don't see any, and that chamber was all hidden away, and the man said something about setting charges, and I think he was going to blow up the equipment after we went.'

  'Maybe.'

  'Sa?'

  'Yes?'

  'I think this is illegal.'

  'It might be, in the Home Time.'

  'Sa?'

  'Yes?'

  'How do we get back if he blew it up?'

  Sarai held her hands up in a shrug. 'The College has got plenty more transference chambers.'

  'But—'

  'Jon, I don't know!' Jontan recoiled from the sharp rise in her voice as if she had hit him. His instinct was to take umbrage, but one sideways glance at her – she was biting her lip – made him change his mind. He thought of something like, you're upset, aren't you? He tried it out in his own mind and rejected it. There was someone in the journeyman's barracks back on the plantation who was always coming out with blindingly obvious statements like that and everyone, Jontan included, thought he was an idiot.

  So, he gently put his hand back on her knee. When it was obvious she wasn't going to throw it off again, he said, 'Sorry.' She nodded and clasped his hand firmly with both of hers.

  'Filler-A's dropping again,' she said. 'That valve's had it.'

  The end of the session came surprisingly soon. It was still before midnight. Mr Daiho sat up, stretching and flexing his back. 'We're getting somewhere,' he said, beaming at them. 'We're really getting somewhere. Well done. I couldn't have done it without you.'

  Praise from a patrician, even one possibly engaged in illegal activity, was a balm to their souls. It felt like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

  'We need to change a valve, sir,' Sarai said.

  'Then you'd better do it, and get some sleep. We'll start again the usual time in the morning. Is Mr Scott back yet?'

  'Um, not yet, sir,' Jontan said.

  'Hmph.' Mr Daiho rumbled something that sounded very like anger, and stood with his back to them to gaze out of the windows down at the cliffs and the sea. Jontan and Sarai glanced at each other, then Sarai ducked beneath the main tank to check the valve. It was a one-person job, phasing the forcefield that held it in place and the forcefield that actually did the work within it so that
they didn't interfere with each other and cause a leak. Jontan wondered what he should do next.

  'Give us a hand, Jon?' Sarai popped up briefly to ask the question, then vanished again. Jontan grabbed a spare phase adjuster and crouched down to see what she wanted.

  'See up there, I think it's loose . . .' she said. He moved his head in closer to see, and then she kissed him, full on the mouth. He almost dropped the adjuster. It seemed to last forever and it made praise from Mr Daiho a very secondary pleasure. Jontan's heart pounded and he couldn't believe she had kissed him with a patrician standing only a few feet away, when everyone knew journeymen didn't, but he was very glad these two just had.

  'I do need you,' she said. 'Symb into the system and tell me how this works.'

  'Right,' he said, still in a daze. Again he had to tune his thoughts to the symb junction, and to his surprise he found his frequency of choice already occupied.

  'LD/1919, stand by,' said a voice he hadn't heard before. It was flat and toneless; he was sure it was artificial, not human. Then, 'LD/1919, transmit.'

  Another voice, and Jontan did recognize this one. It was Mr Daiho. 'LD/1919, nothing to report,' was all he said. Jontan lifted his head up and sneaked a look over the tank. Mr Daiho still hadn't moved from the window. He seemed to be looking up at the moon.

  'Report received, LD/1919,' said the voice. Then contact broke and the frequency cleared. Mr Daiho turned away, but Jontan had already ducked back down.

  'That's a correspondent's code,' said Sarai later. They had the lounge to themselves now and were talking about it in whispers, sitting in one corner of the room.

  'How do you know?'

  'I saw a zine. They're all called something like that, XY/1234. That's how they do it, Jon!'

  'Do what?'

  'That's how they talk to the Home Time. I bet LD/1919 got killed and Mr Daiho uses the same code, and the Register back in the Home Time doesn't know it, so it stores the messages and releases them one by one, like always, and . . .'

  She trailed off and gazed unfocused into space, still working it out.

  'And?' he prompted.

  'And, someone at that end sees the reports and knows we're OK, and that's how Mr Daiho will ask them to recall us.' She grinned in sheer delight. 'See? So we're safe and it's all right. We're going to be all right!'

  Then she kissed him again, and this time he was better able to respond, sliding his arms around her and holding her close, and for the time being that was that, except that both occasionally cocked an eye at the door in case Mr Daiho returned. Eventually she tightened her grasp around him and just hugged him tight. She rested her head on his shoulder.

  'I'm glad you're here, Jon,' she said.

  Jontan started another mental search for something un-trite to say. She spared him the trouble. 'Want to go for a walk?'

  'A walk?' Romance evaporated as he glanced out of the window. 'It's dark!'

  'I know.' She wiggled her eyebrows up and down.

  'But the moon's full.'

  'We might . . . we might fall off the cliff . . .' he said, feeling pathetic.

  'Then we'll walk away from the cliff,' she said. 'Coming?'

  Outside there was enough light not to bump into anything, with the moon and the lights of the hotel behind them. The wind had died down since that afternoon and it no longer put Jontan in mind of pressure leaks and field failures; besides, they were in the garden, sheltered by tall conifers that took the bite out of the gale. In fact the gentle motion of the air past his face, soft and warm, was almost pleasant if he tried not to remember that it had never been anywhere near an atmospheric scrubber and was probably laden with prehistoric pathogens. They strolled down the garden, hand in hand, away from the hotel. The path curved so that before long the hotel was out of view. Then they stopped, and she turned to him, and they kissed again.

  After a while they sat down, arms round each other, and looked out at the valley that stretched away from the hotel inland. It was bathed in moonlight.

  'It's gorgeous,' she said. 'I hate this time but the view's good.'

  'Sa?'

  'Yes?'

  'When did you decide this was a good idea?'

  'Oh, a while ago.'

  'How long?'

  'How long?' She turned and kissed his ear. 'Maybe when Lano Chon pushed me over, and you helped me up, and then you hit him.'

  'When . . .' He frowned. He had no memory of the incident, but he remembered Lano Chon, from a long time before social preparation had settled into them, back when . . .

  'We were seven!' he said.

  'Like I said, a while ago.'

  It was coming back. 'He hit me, too,' he said.

  She giggled. 'He said, look over there! And you looked, and he hit you. I couldn't believe it.'

  'So . . .' he said, wounded.

  'So,' she said, and kissed him on the mouth. 'So, I decided you were never going to be Jean Morbern, but you were all right.'

  'Huh.' He tried to think of a way to get the initiative again. He felt the ground behind him, as a possible prelude to inviting her to lie down. Ugh. The air they breathed might be warm but the ground they sat on was cold and damp and totally uninviting. 'All right, let's— what's this?' His fingers had closed on something like wire. He looked closer. It was indeed wire, but not shiny and very difficult to see in the dark. He pulled at it.

  Flares blazed up into the sky, bright light burst around them and a screaming electronic howl filled the air. The racket of a helicopter thudded overheard and men in dark clothes burst out of the bushes, brandishing guns.

  Twelve

  Utrecht, 1646

  Cornelius van Crink's heart leaped when he saw the gentleman come into the foundry. The man peered in through the door, then stepped into the main workshop, an island of calm amid the noise and heat of Utrecht's finest gunsmiths going about their work. Van Crink's practised eyes reviewed the newcomer – embroidered cloak, polished sword, velvet hat, general air of prosperity and well-to-do – and he stepped smartly forward before any of his underlings could reach the gentleman first. Such a prospective customer deserved nothing but the best.

  The man saw him approaching. 'Are you the master gunsmith?' he called over the racket.

  'Cornelius van Crink, at your service, sir,' van Crink acknowledged with a bow. 'How may I help you, sir?'

  A master merchant, perhaps? he thought with glee. He looked rich enough. It was fifty years since the Dutch had thrown off their Spanish masters, back in the last decade of the sixteenth century. Now the Dutch trading empire was wrapping itself around the world and the merchant class had come into its own. If he was looking to fit out a ship for a trip to the Indies . . . van Crink's heart sang.

  'I'm looking for a brace of pistols,' the man said. Van Crink carefully refused to let his disappointment show.

  'And will that be all, sir?' He had to strain his ears to catch the man's reply, delivered with a smile:

  'I choose to start small, Mr van Crink, but if I am happy with them – who knows?'

  Who indeed? Van Crink's spirits were quite restored. 'Then let us go somewhere more conducive to polite conversation, sir,' he said.

  Van Crink personally escorted the gentleman to the warehouse where an underling opened the door for them. He stood for a moment in quiet reverence before entering. It was better even than entering a house of worship: rows and rows of shiny steel and hand-worked wood, the sublime smell of wrought metal and polish.

  'My warehouse, sir,' he said quietly. 'I know we will have something to suit you. I have to ask, what does sir have in mind for these pistols? Are they for a duel? For hunting? For display?'

  'I want something that is accurate at a range of no more than fifteen feet. More likely ten.' The man's eyes were also ranging along the rows of weapons and van Crink couldn't but notice that there seemed to be a certain casual familiarity there.

  'I understand, sir.' Van Crink didn't, but he got the gist of what the man was after. Fifteen fee
t?

  More likely ten? Obviously a duel. Unless, of course, it wasn't intended that the other man should be armed at all . . . But van Crink simply sold the weapons.

  He turned to a nearby shelf. 'I have here something that might be of interest.' He held up a single example and lovingly presented it to his customer, grip first. An elegant, slim barrel two feet long resting in a beautiful walnut stock. Magnificent carvings in both metal and wood; ornate but not fussy. A weapon of quality.

  The customer took it in, and dismissed it, at a glance.

  'No wheel-locks,' he said. 'Too unreliable.'

  'Unreliable?' van Crink exclaimed. He was too stung for a moment even to remember that the customer's wishes were sacrosanct. His gaze caressed the weapon's priming mechanism, and silently he apologized to it. To fire the gun after it had been loaded with ball and powder, the gun's owner would use a key to wind up a steel wheel connected to a strong spring. Pressing the trigger caused the wheel to spin rapidly, which made it emit sparks, which ignited the powder. A graceful, elegant and above all modern device.

  'I'll take a pair of match-locks,' said the customer. 'These, perhaps.' He picked up one of the pistols to have caught his eye and held it up, squinting along the barrel.

  'Then sir will also want some slow-match?' van Crink said, trying not to sound sarcastic.

  'It would help.' A length of permanently burning slow-match was fixed to the gun's spring mechanism. When the trigger was pressed, it sprang forward and ignited the powder. An assured spark and hence a reliable weapon – on a sunny day.

  Van Crink made one last try. 'My father fought the Spanish, sir. The tales he told me of how his guns were made unserviceable by the rain! "If only I had had a decent wheel-lock in those days, Cornelius," he would say . . .'

  He came to realize that the customer was looking speculatively down the barrel of the match-lock, directly at him. For all that he knew the weapon wasn't primed, and had no match attached to it, lit or otherwise, the look in the customer's eyes meant he suddenly felt very nervous.

  'I'm sure your father fought nobly for the Netherlands,' the customer said calmly, 'but I also expect he fought outdoors.' Abruptly he brought the gun up to his face, barrel pointing to the ceiling. 'Now, about that match . . .'