The Depths of Time (23 page)

“
No, sir. Not at all. We
’
re—we
’
re lost in the future.
”

One hundred twenty-seven years! Koffield suddenly realized that his hands were trembling. Would Marquez think that the shock of his news had caused it, or would he simply put it down to postcryo reaction? Koffield himself wasn
’
t sure which it was.

One hundred twenty-seven years. Gone. His entire world utterly and irrevocably gone. Again. Stranded in the future for the
second
time. How was a man supposed to react to news like that?

There was no way, of course. And that was the way Koffield chose. No reaction at all. That was the best.
“
All right,
”
he said calmly.
“
Clearly we have some thinking to do.
”

“
Yes, sir,
”
Marquez said, vague disappointment in his voice.

Koffield looked at the man in mild surprise. Had Marquez somehow imagined that all one needed to do was wake Anton Koffield so that he could solve all problems with a wave of his omnipotent hand? There was much to be said for having a reputation, but there were limits. Still and all, Marquez
’
s reaction was to be preferred to some of the others Koffield had inspired.

One hundred twenty-seven years—maybe, just maybe, he had
outlived
his reputation. There were lots of old sayings to the effect that there was a bright side to everything. Perhaps they were true after all.

“
Very well,
”
Koffield said. Suddenly the note of calm confidence in his voice was not quite as false as it had been a moment before.
“
Let
’
s get me cleaned up, then get a look at the future.
”

It was a few minutes before Koffield felt strong enough to walk unassisted. When he did, Marquez walked him down the corridor and showed him to his cabin.
“
Refresh yourself, Admiral,
”
he told Koffield as he opened the cabin hatch and gestured for his guest to step in.
“
Take as much time as you need. I will be in the command center whenever you are ready.
”

“
Thank you, Captain,
”
Koffield said.
“
I won
’
t be long.
”
He stepped into the cabin and shut the hatch behind him with a distinct sense of relief. He needed a shower and a meal, of course—but he also, desperately, needed to collect his thoughts.

Koffield stripped out of the thin gown he had worn in the cryo chamber, opened the cabin
’
s refresher unit, stepped in, and powered up the pressure shower. The jets of hot water seemed nearly strong enough to push him back against the opposite wall of the compartment. It felt good.
My first shower in over a century,
Koffield thought.
I
bet I really need it.
The weak little joke was no doubt as old as timeshaft transport, if not older, but it cheered him up a trifle all the same.

Anton Koffield was not a particularly impressive physical specimen at the best of times, and times had not been good for him, even before entering cold sleep. He had entered the cryocan in a state of near exhaustion from overwork. The effort needed to complete his research in time for departure, the desperate urgency of his mission, and plain, old-fashioned fear of what he had found had combined to leave him completely drained. After the further stress of cryosleep, he was verging on the cadaverous. His cheeks were hollowed, his skin drawn tight.

The outer layers of dead skin disintegrated in cryosleep, turning into a grimy and unpleasant powder that covered the entire body and itched like the devil. He leaned into the jets of water and scrubbed as hard as his still-rubbery arms would let him.

Clearly the first step was to establish, to his own satisfaction, exactly what their situation was. Accepting reality was one thing, but there were also such things as confirming important data and gathering supporting data. Anton Koffield had faith enough in Marquez to believe him, but not so much faith that he did not want to verify it all. Trusting unconfirmed information was a shortcut to getting killed.

And, no doubt, Captain Marquez, being no fool himself, was more than eager to have Koffield check his work. The good captain would be delighted if Koffield found an error, but Koffield had no realistic hope of that and doubted that Marquez did either.

Hurry could kill them too. Fresh out of cryosleep—if
fresh
was the word—no one was ever in any condition to do precise work. He stepped from the shower, dried himself, and pulled underclothes and a pair of coveralls out of the cabin
’
s storage locker. He pulled on the clothes and extracted a quickmeal module from the cabin
’
s galley unit.

He folded the refresher unit back into one bulkhead of the tiny cabin and pulled table and chair down from the opposite bulkhead. He activated the meal module and waited for the unit to heat the food. His shifted uncomfortably on the chair. His coveralls were tight under the shoulders, and the fabric seemed awfully scratchy. His skin was always oversensitized after cryosleep. A faint odor clung to the cloth of the coveralls, a musty, damp smell that put him in mind of mold and the cellar under his grandfather
’
s house outside Berlin. Did that house still stand, a hundred twenty-seven years since he had last seen it? No, it was over two hundred years now. He had been time-stranded again, cut adrift from even the weak and tenuous roots he had set down eight decades before, after the
Upholder
disaster.

The meal module chimed, signaling that his food was heated. He opened the module and looked at the meal inside. There was nothing readily identifiable. A bowl of thick brownish-grey liquid that might be soup or stew, some beige-looking stuff that might be mashed-potato substitute, and some sort of green puree.

No doubt it was all edible, and nourishing, and precisely what the diet specialists knew he would need after cryosleep, but none of that made it appetizing. Of course, the dieticians made the postcryo meals bland and soft on purpose, to avoid overworking jaw muscles that hadn
’
t moved for decades, or overstimulating the senses of taste and smell after they had gone unused for just as long. Still, considering he was about to have his first
food
in over a century, it was something of a perverse accomplishment to sit down to a meal and not wish to eat it.

He allowed himself a small smile. Well, what could he expect? The food had been in cold storage as long as the coveralls, as long as he himself. He took the fork out of its compartment on the side of the module and began shoveling the nutritious glop into his mouth, eating mechanically, experiencing no more pleasure than would a machine taking on fuel, paying no attention to what he ate.

They were in trouble, very serious trouble. The situation was far more complicated and dangerous than Marquez could even suspect. There were wheels within wheels, hidden opportunities, and pitfalls. He continued to feed himself as he tried to work it all through, his mind as far removed from his body as it had been on first awaking from cryo.

Still thinking over the situation, he finished up his joyless repast as quickly as possible. He stood, folded up the
table and chair, and put the meal module into the cleanup bin. He needed to go forward, see what Captain Marquez had found out.

Except that Marquez did not, could not, know the half of it. Koffield had already reached out for the handle to the cabin door when he forced himself to stop, to consider.

Anxious as he was to go forward to the control center and get a look at the data firsthand, it was starting to dawn on him that so doing might be a mistake. He made himself sit back down and consider. Think it through. Consider it as a chess game, and try to think at least a few moves ahead.

One hundred twenty-seven years was a long time in human terms. Things got lost, or forgotten, or thrown away. Even if his preliminary warning, sent on the
Chron-Six,
had gotten through and gotten .to the proper people,
could
they have acted on it?
Would
they have?

In a cold, rational analysis, there was no argument that could be raised against his data. But who would abandon a planet based on nine pages of obscure formulae? Koffield had known the data itself would not be enough the day he had sent off his preliminary findings on board the
Chron-Six.
That was why he had booked passage on the
Dom Pedro IV
in the first place, so that he could speak for the data, work to see that it was read and understood.

Unless she had been lost in transit as well, the
Chron-Six
had arrived at Solace 127 years ago, and she had delivered his data. What had happened then? Had his preliminary report changed the history of this and other worlds—or had it been lost and forgotten? Was it enshrined in a place of honor in the archives, or had it never been set down in the public record?

What sort of planet was waiting for them, out ahead of the
DP-IV?
Marquez had told him nothing about the state of the planet itself, but had merely reported the bald fact that it was there.

He, Koffield, at this exact moment, had no knowledge whatsoever concerning the state of the planet. That might well prove to be an important point.

There seemed to be three broad possibilities.

One—he had been right, and they had listened, tested his data, seen it to be true, and abandoned the planet. If so, the
DP-IV
was now entering an all-but-lifeless star system, littered with abandoned equipment and populated only by the descendants of the inevitable lunatics who refused to leave their space habitats, and whatever motley crew of vermin and microbes had found some way of surviving on the planet
’
s surface. It was unlikely, but possible.

Two—they had lost, ignored, disbelieved, disproved, or suppressed his data, and events had proved his theory wrong. In which case the
DP-IV
was about to arrive on the garden planet that DeSilvo and all his experts had predicted. The advanced terraforming procedures had been triumphant, and Solace was a paradise, and he, Koffield, was either totally forgotten or else remembered as a figure of fun.

Or, three—he had been right, and they had ignored his work at the time, and long since forgotten it, and there was a planet full of people dying out there. Given human nature, the third option seemed by far the most likely.

In that case—in that case he might well need some proof that he had made his predictions 127 years in the past, and that he had made them before he had any way of knowing what sort of shape Solace was in.

He stood up and found the intercom set in the usual place, mounted on the bulkhead just inside the hatch. After a moment or two, he figured out how to hail the command center and did so. The captain answered almost at once.
“
Marquez here. What is it, Admiral Koffield?
”

Just for a moment, Koffield found himself wondering how Marquez had known who was calling. Then he smiled to himself. Who else could it have been? He wasn
’
t going to get far thinking ahead in this chess game if he couldn
’
t think any more clearly than
that.
“
Captain, I
’
m sorry to call you back here this way, but I have thought of something that needs doing, and it needs to be recorded and witnessed. I can
’
t tell you more than that just now. Could I ask you to come back to my quarters, and to bring a longwatch camera and a secured container—one large enough to hold a cryosleep personal pack.

“
Admiral, there are a number of ship
’
s systems I haven
’
t done checks on since arrival. I really do have a lot of work to—
”

“
This is important, Captain.
”

“
Well, what is it?
”

“
I can
’
t tell you until after it
’
s done.
”

“
Then why should I—
”

“
I apologize for not explaining everything now,
”
Koffield said, smoothly cutting in,
“
but there was a rule of thumb in my old investigative outfit that the most objective witness was the one who knew the least and saw the most—and I need you to be objective.
”

The line was silent for a moment, and then Marquez spoke, making no effort to keep the puzzlement and annoyance out of his voice.
“
I am not in the mood for games, Admiral, and I don
’
t have time for them. Your rank doesn
’
t entitle you to give me orders on my own ship.
”

“
I know, Captain. But my guess is you know enough about me.to know I likewise have little time for games. But if you can take ten minutes of your time to witness something, there is at least a chance that you will be helping to save lives, a great many lives, on Solace.
”

“
I can
’
t quite see how that could be possible,
”
Marquez replied, the disbelief plain in his voice.