Time's Chariot Read online

  The Correspondent checked the brace of pistols for the tenth time. Both were charged and primed, both were ready. He had owned them from new and he had practised with them for months. He could hit anything he chose at up to thirty feet. It was an accuracy that would have astonished that van Crink man, but then, the Correspondent had access to thought processes and powers of mental computation that would also have astonished the fat gunsmith. And in the very unlikely event of his missing with one barrel, he doubted his target could move fast enough to avoid the other.

  The sounds of busy Utrecht – horses, street cries, the constant murmur of a large population – drifted in through the window. He ignored them. He had planned for this for so long, and the visitor would appear if his plan worked.

  It was obvious that the visitor, the man who had appeared at every interview the Correspondent had given in his career, was taking the co-ordinates for his trips from the Correspondent's reports. Well, tonight, if all went well, the Correspondent would file a report with the lunar station to the effect that he had interviewed René Descartes – father of modern science; first mathematician to classify curves according to the equations that produced them; significant contributor to the theory of equations; devisor of the use of indices to express the powers of numbers; formulator of the rule of signs for finding the numbers of positive and negative roots for any algebraic equation – at 10 o'clock in the morning on 30 June, 1646, here in an upper room in this modest house of timber in Utrecht. Descartes lived in a house, bought with his own money, and so it was in a house that the Correspondent had had to set his trap. Any other location might have aroused suspicion in their minds. He had bought the place he was in now twenty years ago, back in 1626; time enough for a steady succession of tenants, time enough for any connection that the Home Time might have been able to make with him to blur. Then he had carefully left Utrecht. He had made no mention in his reports of the house purchase and given the impression he had just been passing through. He had continued on his travels around Europe.

  To return a month ago. To evict the current tenants. To wait.

  And there he was. With that strange sense of no transition, as if he had always been there and it was only the Correspondent's memory at fault, there stood the man, dressed like a prosperous Dutch merchant, raising his right hand.

  As did the Correspondent, much more quickly, bringing one of the match-locks to bear on a direct line between the Correspondent's eyes and the man's forehead. 'Don't,' he said, in the language of the Home Time. The pistol was pointing exactly between the visitor's eyes. 'I've seen what these can do to a man's head, which I doubt you have.'

  Realization and horror flashed across the visitor's face. 'My god, you remembered me,' he said, and his hand twitched upwards.

  The Correspondent fired, moving his hand slightly before he did. The crash of the gun was deafening and smoke filled the room. When it had cleared, the visitor was doubled over, moaning and clutching his ear, and the Correspondent's other gun was raised.

  'I've just nicked your left ear exactly an inch above the lowest point of the lobe,' said the Correspondent. His one main worry was unfounded: the man's pain showed that he wasn't another correspondent. 'So don't doubt that I can hit any part of you that I choose. Now, stand up and drop the thing in your right hand.'

  The visitor did so, slowly, and the small crystal sphere that the Correspondent had glimpsed so often in the past dropped onto the wooden floor with a clatter. The Correspondent stooped to pick it up.

  'Now strip,' he said. The visitor's eyes widened. 'Strip completely.'

  Five minutes later they were in another room, the visitor wrapped in a robe that the Correspondent had supplied. If he had had any further Home Time gadgets about him that could have helped him, they were lying in the abandoned pile of clothing in the upper front room.

  'I don't know your name,' the Correspondent said. The visitor glared at him but said nothing. 'Herbert, I think,' said the Correspondent, 'until you tell me otherwise. Herbert the time traveller.'

  'H–how did you remember?' the visitor asked. They sat facing each other in comfortable chairs. The Correspondent had thought it only hospitable to set some wine aside in readiness, and Herbert's teeth clattered against his cup. The Correspondent held his own cup in one hand and the second match-lock in the other, and the barrel pointed without wavering at Herbert's heart.

  'Not important,' said the Correspondent. With the Bacon incident in mind, he had taken the precaution of giving the servants the day off. 'Incidentally, I've stored a written account of everything I remember in several locations around town and elsewhere. Even if you somehow make me forget everything again, I'll remember again. And again, and again, and again.'

  Herbert grimaced. 'I was careless.'

  'Yes,' the Correspondent agreed. 'And now you can make up for it by taking me back to the Home Time.' Herbert looked at him with blank surprise. 'Back to the Home Time,' the Correspondent repeated, with more emphasis. 'When I first arrived I was keen, fired with enthusiasm to report, a loyal servant of my masters in the glorious, glowing future. I knew I had a purpose, a valuable function, and I was eager to serve. The Home Time was waiting for my reports. They needed them. The twenty-first century seemed a long time to wait, but I could handle it, and of course there was no way home, was there? You couldn't send anyone back to get me because the equipment to do so wouldn't exist before the twenty-first century. I had to wait, I had no choice.

  'And then, then, I learned the Home Time were a bunch of lying bastards and they could come and go as they pleased. Somehow, my motivation just evaporated. And now, you can take me back.'

  Herbert slowly put down his cup and sat back in his chair, cold amusement doing battle on his face with natural caution deriving from the fact that the Correspondent still held a gun pointing at him. 'Supposing I said it was impossible?' he said.

  'I wouldn't believe you. Everything else has been a lie, hasn't it?'

  'Transference doesn't need—'

  'Transference?'

  'Travel through time,' Herbert snapped. 'Transference doesn't need equipment for the return journey. The Home Time sends a recall field. But it wouldn't work on you. It's a matter of probability frequency, which changes every time a transference is made. The recall has to be the same frequency as the send. We don't want to pick up any Ops—'

  'Any what?'

  'Time travellers from another point in the Home Time, you see. Now, the probability resonance of objects can be changed, that's how we bring back samples from other times, but that needs special tagging equipment which I don't have on me.' He looked the Correspondent in the eyes. 'That's why I can't take you back. Not won't, can't.'

  The Correspondent said nothing for a moment. Then: 'You have one of these recall fields planned, then?'

  'I set it to cover the immediate area around the original co-ordinates,' Herbert said, after a pause during which he was plainly wondering how much to reveal. 'If I'd had the foresight to set it to cover a wider area, we wouldn't be having this conversation now. I'd have just vanished.'

  'It's already come on?'

  'Been and gone by now. It came on two minutes after arrival. But if I miss it it's set to come on every hour at the same point until I do make it.' He scowled. 'I've never missed it before.'

  'Supposing I grab hold of you and hold you tight when the field does come on?'

  Herbert shook his head. 'Probability masking. You'd get two conflicting probability resonances in the same area, the field would be confused and neither of us would be recalled at all.'

  Another pause. 'You've lied to me about the one main tenet of being a correspondent,' said the Correspondent. 'No home journey until the twenty-first century. So why should I believe you now?'

  'That bit is true,' said Herbert. 'Recall Day will be the last thing the Home Time does while transference is still possible, and the whole world will be bathed in every transference frequency ever used. You'll be recalled if you live th
at long.'

  'Why that day? And what's this about the last thing the Home Time does?'

  The visitor ticked the points off on his fingers. 'That day, because that's when a bygoner scientist will invent equipment that could detect transference. And soon after that, the bygoners will get back to the moon, maybe find the lunar station. The past becomes untenable for us after that date. We call it the Fallow Age.'

  'And the Home Time?' the Correspondent prompted.

  'The Home Time is a period of set probability flux. There's a singularity beneath the College – our, um, centre of operations – that makes transference possible because it vibrates at a fixed, unchanging probability frequency. It's a permanent referent. An, ah, anchor that will always drag us back home again. But it won't last forever, it's decaying, and the day will come when it ends and transference won't be possible any more. But we keep our word, and you will be recalled before then.'

  'How long does it have to run? From your point of view?'

  'Is that relevant? Let's just say, not long enough.'

  'You've been very forthcoming,' the Correspondent said. 'I could still just kill you now.'

  'You could,' said Herbert. 'But this is an imperfect situation, so let's make the best of it.' His earlier shock was all gone now and he sounded almost in charge. 'I can't take you back with me, just now. You've remembered me. Inconvenient, but it's happened. Now—'

  'I'm not going to carry on as a Correspondent,' said the Correspondent. 'I might have to stay here but I'm damned if I'm going to lift a finger for you again.'

  Herbert shrugged. 'It's not unusual for Correspondents to take a break, go off-line for a century or two, maybe forever. It's your decision.' He smiled a cold, lop-sided smile. 'Maybe we can discuss things?'

  Thirteen

  Marje?' Marje jumped: Su Zo must have been waiting for her just outside the canteen. 'You did say you'd see me around,' Su said with an embarrassed smile.

  'Su! Um, I, ah, yes, yes, I did,' Marje agreed.

  'Good to see you. How's things?'

  'Um . . . can we walk?' Su said.

  'Why not? I've got to get back to the office. This way.' They started walking towards the nearest carryfield, side by side.

  'Thanks for letting us look through the Commissioner's things,' Su said.

  'It was my pleasure.' Su was plainly ill at ease so Marje cast around in her mind for a way to continue the conversation. 'Did Op Garron find his computer?'

  Su shook her head. 'No. We found all kinds of interesting things, I mean, he did a lot more transferring than we ever thought he would have, but not that. Marje . . .' Suddenly it all came out in a rush. 'Rico's been suspended and there's to be an enquiry into his conduct.'

  'Oh,' said Marje, nonplussed. 'I'm, ah, sorry.'

  'Supervisor Marlici cornered us at the party last night and delivered a reprimand. Rico's third. And suspension is automatic for an Op with three reprimands.'

  Marje shrugged. There were only so many times she could say she was sorry, and she wasn't sure she was. Su carried on talking.

  'One of those reprimands was yours, Marje, and I know for a fact it was, um . . .'

  'Unjustified,' said Marje. 'I know, and I apologized for it.' Now she did feel something, and it was anger. It was just what she had been afraid of at the time – that ass Asaldra getting Garron into trouble. She had let it pass because surely one reprimand wasn't career-threatening. It hadn't occurred to her that Garron might already have had some on his record. But if he was the kind of man who attracted reprimands, perhaps he deserved suspension. 'Which one was mine?' she said.

  'The second. The third . . . we had to do a routine courier job in gamma-Vienna. Pick up the superintendent's report, nothing special. Except that the superintendent there was abusing his position with the bygoners. Rico took him to task for it . . . he must have symbed a complaint into the report crystal I was carrying and we brought it back without even knowing it. I reported my version as well, but it doesn't seem to have done any good.'

  If Su had just come to beg, Marje would have dismissed her. If Su had asked her to use her influence, such as it was, with Fieldwork's Commissioner Ario, the result would have been similar. But Su was simply stating facts, and whether by design or accident, that was the approach that captured Marje's attention.

  'Op Garron has a lot to learn about tact if he's to make progress in Fieldwork,' she said.

  'Rico used to be senior to me, Marje. He was a Senior Field Op in Specific Operations.'

  'Really?' Marje stopped walking. Now, that did surprise her. The Specifics were the elite of Fieldwork. 'I see,' she said, to give herself time to think. 'Thank you for telling me, Su, I'll . . . I'll look into it.'

  Su still didn't smile: she bowed her head slightly. 'Thank you,' she said, and turned to walk away.

  'Wait,' Marje said. With the matter of Garron out of the way, something else that Su had said finally sank in. 'What did you mean when you said Li did more transferring than you thought?'

  Ten minutes later an even more pre-occupied Marje Orendal entered her office and sat down at her desk. Li had gone transferring? Li had gone transferring?

  Su had told her about the list of transferences they had found in Daiho's effects. She and Garron hadn't thought twice about them; but then, they hadn't known the man. Marje had, and if ever a man was born to be a stay-at-home stick-in-the-mud it had been Li Daiho.

  One transference here and now, well, maybe.

  But a spate of seventeen was . . . odd. Where could he have gone?

  Well, that was easily settled. Marje called up the list herself, on her authority as Commissioner. 'Compare against list of approved transference sites,' she symbed, and the answer came back: they weren't approved sites.

  'Not approved?' Marje exclaimed out loud, in sheer surprise. But Li must have got those coordinates from somewhere. Co-ordinates were assembled from historical records, or simple deduction, or on-the-spot Field Ops, and in all cases were entered into the database of approved sites . . . assuming they were found to be safe. But there was another source of information, as she of all people should know.

  'Compare against all co-ordinates returned by correspondents,' she symbed cautiously.

  And there it was. Marje gazed in awe at the two lists displayed side by side across her vision. Every site chosen had been reported by the same correspondent, RC/1029. (Where had she seen that correspondent's designation before? She pushed the question away, to come back to later.) None had subsequently been entered into the approved general list, which could only mean one thing. Li didn't want anyone following him.

  And that would be fair enough: if a Field Op transferred to co-ordinates that were found to be unsuitable – for instance, they were in the middle of a crowded room, or something – then that site would be put on the banned list and, if bygoners had become aware of the Home Time as a result, the Specifics would be sent in to clear things up. Not unusual.

  But to go unerringly to seventeen unsuitable sites? And – it took a second to check – the Specifics had not been sent in. Li had kept all this secret. And that itself was illegal.

  Another thought . . .

  'Summarize the reports in which these co-ordinates were delivered.' Another heartbeat's pause, and then the bald summaries were laid out before her. Each time the correspondent had been interviewing a philosopher.

  I really did not know this man, Marje thought. But she remembered where she had heard of RC/1029: Li had been getting regular reports from him. And then, apparently, going along to see for himself.

  Having a hobby was one thing – but this? What had he been doing?

  Well, she was going to find out. If her predecessor had been engaged in illegal activity then she had to find out; and if there was an innocent explanation that was simply escaping her right now . . . well, she should find it. She really should.

  And she knew just the man for the job.

  'Op Garron. Come in.'

  It had taken
over an hour in a healer, but Rico's wrenched thigh had been unwrenched, his bruised tissues regenerated and the damage from the beating was just a memory, so he was able to enter the office without difficulty. It was only the second time he had seen Acting Commissioner Orendal face to face, and it seemed there was a momentary warmth there before she froze over and became appropriately formal. She was one of those people, Rico decided, who for some reason felt that different personae were needed for their private and their public lives.

  She stood up as he entered her office and held out a hand; he hesitated for just a fraction, then walked across the glowing carpet (Twenty-first century? Hideous, anyway) to shake it. He had resolved, to himself and to Su, that he would behave himself. He was suspended and she might – might – be able to do something about it, so there was no point in antagonizing her.

  'Please, sit down,' she said. He sat in the chair indicated, across the desk from her. It was more modern than the rest of the office, an empty frame with a forcefield for the seat. Perhaps, he thought, Orendal was imposing her more contemporary tastes on her predecessor's room with a wave of modernity that emanated outwards from the desk but hadn't yet reached the rest of the office. She rested her elbows on the desk top, steepled her fingers. The lines on her face showed she was perfectly capable of smiling, if she chose.

  'Thank you for coming,' she said. 'I want to make you a proposition.'

  'Please do,' Rico said.

  'You've been suspended, pending a tribunal, and that's partly my fault.'

  'One of the reprimands was because of a complaint from your office, yes,' Rico said without expression.

  'One of them,' she said pointedly. 'Of three.' Rico said nothing. 'I've no doubt that the matter will be cleared up at the tribunal and you'll be put back on the active list.'

  'Will you be speaking on my behalf?' Rico said innocently.

  'No,' she said. She paused a beat, while Rico thought, typical, then: 'the individual who made the complaint will be speaking instead.'