âCan you tell me how to say, “He is alive”?'
she subvocalized.
Try
âVivit.'
Polly gestured to the prostrate soldier, and repeated Nandru's words. Claudius, his expression frightened, spat an order and swords were immediately sheathed.
âThat seemed to work,' said Polly cheerfully.
Well, they haven't nailed you to a tree yet, so that's a plus.
The soldiers loaded Walnut Crusher onto the litter, and he was rapidly born back to the encampment. Polly followed on foot beside the limping Emperor.
Â
TACK WAS FOOLISHLY PLEASED to be given the honour of addressing Traveller by his true name, though Saphothere was a mouthful to someone from
an age when appellations of more than two syllables were considered excessive.
âSaphothere.' He tried it out. âWhat was that weapon you used on their fence?' he asked, staring into the darkness outside the cave mouth.
Saphothere turned on some kind of palm torch to illuminate the interior beyond. âMolecular catalyser. The palisade was constructed of a steel composite and ceramoplastic. The catalyser caused them to react with each other: the iron in the steel combined with the oxygen in the organic molecules of the plastic, turning the fence into a powder consisting mainly of iron oxide and carbon.' He glanced at Tack. âUnderstand, Tack, I have given you permission to use my name, but you will also use my title. The correct form of address is “Traveller Saphothere”. Your actions at the Umbrathane stronghold were admirable, but they do not entitle you to overfamiliarity.'
Tack grimaced as he followed Saphothere deeper inside. Studying the cave floor, he spotted broken bones and the skull of some bovid that had been crushed by the large teeth of a predator, and was grateful that Traveller had retrieved and returned his seeker gun.
âWhat period are we in now ⦠Traveller Saphothere?'
Saphothere looked at him askance, perhaps regretting the leeway he had granted. âIt's the Palaeoceneâsixty-three million years in your past. There are not so many large animals around just now, as an extinction event occurred not long ago in evolutionary terms.' The man then noticed the direction of Tack's attention and added, âSome carnivorous dinosaurs did survive, but they will not survive the coming competition with the mammals.' At that moment Saphothere's torch revealed something thatâlike Pig Cityâdid not belong here: a steel door.
âThey knew of you: Coptic and Meelan. She spoke your name when they saw you running towards them ⦠Traveller.'
With no evident movement from Saphothere, the round door suddenly released from its surrounding metal frame and hissed inwards, revealing a well-lit room stacked with equipment.
âThe Umbrathane should know my nameâfor most of my life I've been hunting and killing them across half a billion years.'
Saphothere led the way past the stored equipment and into a spartan living area. Here, there were rough wooden chairs around a table, bunks for four people, equipment that might have been equally domestic or the control system for launching atomic weapons for all Tack knew, and supply boxes containing packets of food and drink. Saphothere touched a console as he walked
past it, and a horizontal bar rose above it, dragging up behind it a screen of translucent film on which image-enhanced exterior scenes were instantly displayed, along with scrolling pictographic script and mobile Euclidian shapes that meant nothing to Tack.
Glancing towards him, Saphothere explained, âSecurity systemâbut of an order of magnitude more efficient than the pathetic one that guarded Pig City.' He dropped into a seat and rubbed his eyes. âGetting to that place was more difficult than destroying it. I hadn't realized they had so much energy to squander.'
Tack dropped against a wall the pack that had belonged to Coptic and Meelan. Saphothere, after already checking through its contents, had returned it to him with the injunction not to use any of the more complex devices it contained without instruction. Still eyeing the pack possessively, Tack took a seat on the other side of the table.
âI don't understand,' Tack began.
Saphothere looked up. âThose enteledonts were from twenty million years in the future, and by establishing them as guards, the Umbrathane pushed their city far downslope. It has been difficult for me to bring us back to the main line. To reach here we travelled sideways in time.' Saphothere was studying him carefully, perhaps waiting for questions his explanation would no doubt provoke from a linear mind.
But Tack understood. âWhere did they get their energy from?' he asked instead. Saphothere nodded in approval. âThey used fusion reactors dismounted from their spaceships, and perhaps some sort of parasitism on the wormhole. Easy enough, as energy is projected along it from New London all the timeâit's what our mantisals recharge from, mostlyâand its available abundance in the ages between there and Sauros is the reason we were able to jump so accurately to here.' Saphothere gestured at their surroundings. Then with a nasty smile he added, âThough such accurate time-shifting raises the danger of running into yourself, which would cause a short-circuit paradoxâsomething you could only risk inside the temporal barriers of somewhere like Sauros.'
Tack absorbed this for a moment then asked, âSo the time tunnel, the wormhole, is a conduit for this energy ⦠the energy you all use?'
âYou might say that. Better to say, though, that the time tunnel is the energyâit's comprised of that.'
Tack nodded slowly. He understood only a fraction of this now, but hoped to grasp more as his relationship with Saphothere progressed. He no longer felt desperate for immediate answers now he knew they would be forthcoming anyway.
âYou need food and rest now,' Tack said, gesturing to the nearby stocks. âThat's food?'
âIt is, but I'll have to show you howâ'
âI'll learn,' said Tack, standing up. And Saphothere was too tired himself to even be annoyed about the interruption. He rested his forehead on his arms, while Tack taught himself how to cook with the alien equipment. Finally he brought a lavish meal to the table, and they ate in silence, Saphothere growing visibly stronger with each mouthful he consumed. When they had finished, Saphothere got up and brought a bottle of amber liquid and two glasses to the table.
âOne of the better products of your time ⦠well ⦠quite near to your time. In the nineteenth century Sauros sat for a while in the sea underneath the Arctic ice cap. I managed to acquire five or six crates of this before our next shift. I don't have much left now,' he explained.
Tack and Traveller proceeded to drink malt whiskyâfor Tack a first-ever experience.
Â
THE EMPEROR WAS PERSISTENT in his attempts at communicating, the watcher noted. He sat impatiently on the edge of his couch, rather than reclining on it like his subordinates did on theirs. But the words were becoming increasingly mangled in his mouth as the wine flowed, and Polly was unsurprisingly showing signs of confusion, despite the fact that the AI device she carried was obviously offering some sort of translation. Perhaps it could not explain to her why the Romans seemed both excited and scared upon hearing her name. The watcher herself ran a search through her own database and came to the conclusion that this was because of its similarity to âApollyon'âthe Greek name for the Lord of the Abyss, Satan.
Then Polly said out loud, âSo they think I'm some sort of demon now?'
Demon, messenger, oracle ⦠they don't seem able to make up their minds,
the watcher opined, noting the slave standing behind the girl, scribbling down her every utterance on a piece of parchment. Talking out loud to her AI companion, had probably been what had clinched it because it was quite obviously not an act.
Now also sitting on the edge of her couch, the girl listened and responded as best she could when Claudius addressed her. Otherwise, her attention was inevitably focused on the platters of food the slaves kept bringing: fish served in a fragrant sauce, meats with sweet and crunchy coatings, dried figs and fresh
apples. She even worked her way through a whole platter of oysters. Noting Claudius eating his way through a large plate of mushrooms, and then checking her database again, the watcher whispered to herself,
Now that's a preference he'll come to regret.
But there was little enough going on here, and tracking forward the watcher observed that guests not yet departed were falling asleep on their couches. Claudius himself was snoring like a malfunctioning chainsaw and soon four slaves came in to pick up his couch, and carry it out of the tentâthe troop of Germanic guards falling in behind. Two female slaves entered silently, but shortly made it understood that Polly should accompany them. She was led off to another tent, lit by an oil lamp, and containing a bed covered with furs and silks. The girl imperiously waved away the slaves when they attempted to undress her and, taking off only her boots, collapsed and was instantly asleep.
Enjoy it while you can.
The watcher skipped over the night into the next day and observed the killing.
Â
âABOUT TWO THOUSAND YEARS in your future,' Saphothere replied to the question Tack would have liked to have asked him long ago. âAfter the Muslim jihad and the ensuing resource wars, after the nuclear winter that resulted from those wars, and after the fall of your whole civilization through your tendency to breed weak humans and strong plagues.'
Tack dared to reach out for the bottle and topped up Saphothere's then his own glass. âWeak humans, strong plagues?'
Saphothere took up his glass and downed half its contents. âYou were already witnessing it in your age: hospital superbugs, variant pneumonias, air-transmitted HIVs. Ignoring the fundamental facts of evolution, you used antibiotics in excess, by this artificial selection process thus producing bacteria resistant to antibiotics. And that is only one small example.'
Much was already being said to that effect in his own time, Tack remembered, but there had seemed little genuine will to do anything about it. How could doctors refuse a dying man further treatment on the basis that this would eventually lead to the treatment itself becoming ineffective?
âWeak humans?' Tack nudged.
Saphothere stared at him, a faint smile twisting his features. âNot something entirely applicable to yourself, but you and those of your kind were a persistent exception.' He did not explain further, but went on, âThe ordinary people of
your time were coddled in the extreme with drugs and medical treatments, and in your soft, malformed societies the weak and the stupid were allowed, even encouraged, to breed indiscriminately. As the centuries passed, the human gene pool became weaker, while plagues became more common. The second Dark Age began with a neurovirusâfor most of humanity a plague contracted in the womb. Like syphilis it ate away at the brain and claimed its victims by the time they reached their thirties. That sorry age lasted a thousand years, until the rise of the Umbrathane.'
âThe Umbrathane preceded you then?'
Saphothere was now grinning openly in a way that could only be described as nasty. âOh yes. They arose from a small interbred group who had managed to maintain a cerebral-programming technology that enabled them to live, individually, decades longer than anyone else on the planet. They spread out from their enclave and took control. Umbrathane: meaning those bringing the land out of shadow. But does any of this sound familiar to you?'
Tack was at a loss to know why it should. This all occurred in a future he would never have reached in his natural lifespan.
âThey came before you?' Tack repeated, hiding his mounting irritation.
âBefore us, yet with us always. They bred the weakness out of the human race. The Nazis and the Stalinists of your own recent past were nothing in comparison to them: hundreds of millions of weaker beings were exterminated in their camps, and their own breeding programs lasted for centuries. They made the human race strong and succeeded in taking it out into the solar systemâbefore fracturing into various sub-sects perpetually at each other's throats.'
âSo when did the Heliothane come into being?'
âThere was a catastrophic war ⦠millions killed on the surface of Mars, incinerated by sun mirrors originally used to heat the surface of that planet, but then turned into weapons by a sect which decided that the adaption of the human form to exist in those airless wilds was sacrilegious. Before we named ourselves Heliothane we controlled those mirrors, the giant energy dam in orbit between Io and Jupiter, and other energy resources in the solar system. We were engineers, on the whole, and finally became unable to countenance the destruction of our projects in these petty wars. Finally deciding to act, and with so many power sources at our disposal, we had outreached the Umbrathane technologically and industrially within a decade.'
âAnd then?'
Saphothere drained his glass, then refilled it. Tack's glass was still full, for though he was enjoying the buzz from the alcohol, he had forgotten to drink while this story unfolded.