The Depths of Time (7 page)

But at the moment the
Upholder
had a great deal to communicate, and sending her messages, despite the complexities and difficulties, was a top priority.

“
What have you got for me, Sheelton?
”
Koffield asked as he stood up. He returned Sheelton
’
s nervous salute and gestured for him to come forward into the compartment. Koffield forced himself to smile, and forced the smile to look pleasant, sincere. Koffield knew he could not afford to let any member of the crew note his own worries, his own anxieties. He had to create and maintain the illusion that he was calm and confident. He knew damned well that if he crumbled, morale would plummet. And morale was dangerously low to begin with.

“
Well, ah, good news, I think, sir,
”
Sheelton replied, proffering a report pad. Koffield took the pad and sat back down behind his desk. He activated the pad and started to examine it before he glanced up and saw Sheelton still standing there.
“
At ease and take a chair, son.
”

“
Thank you, sir,
”
Sheelton said.

Koffield nodded absently as he scrolled and paged through the report pad
’
s display.
“
Four serviceable courier drones?
”
he asked.
“
That
’
s all we can manage?
”

“
We
’
re lucky to get that many,
”
said Sheelton.
“
I thought for sure we
’
d lost all eight drones when we did the first afteraction survey. The drone storage bay got hit hard in the last wave of impacts, sir, and that compartment took a big part of the electromagnetic pulse when the shields burned out. Sorry, sir.
”

Koffield didn
’
t understand the apology at first—but then he made the connection. Sheelton had been operating the shields during the attack. He looked the young officer straight in the eye.
“
Sorry for what?
”
he asked.
“
Because the shields couldn
’
t absorb and disperse ten times the energy and impact stress they were rated to take? The shields
saved
this ship, and everyone aboard her. I suggest you remember that, Lieutenant.
”

“
Ah, yes, sir. I will.
”

“
Let
’
s get back to the couriers. You report four serviceable drones, assembled by cannibalizing the eight wrecks and by dipping into spare parts. How far into this will I have to read to find how serviceable
‘
serviceable
’
is?
”

“
I can tell you that right off, sir. You
’
ve got two courier drones that meet all specs and certificates, full backups to all systems. And you
’
ve two others that work, but with a few subsystems that are running without backup, or where main and backup systems are both a little chancy. They
’
d probably do fine on a routine flight—but, well sir, I can
’
t promise you the couriers will
have
routine flights.
”

Koffield nodded thoughtfully. Considering how badly the
Upholder
had been chewed up, he was probably lucky to get one good drone, let alone two good and two fair.
“
Very well,
”
he said.
“
Prepare to send all four of them out, at twenty-four-hour intervals. The first we
’
ll release on this side of the wormhole, with the fullest possible documentation of the attack. Send all our data, copies of the ship
’
s automatic and manual logs, everything. Use the better of the two substandard drones. Then send the other three downtime through the wormhole, into the past, with
nothing,
and I mean
nothing,
more than the allowed operational-rules data. We send to the past only what came to us
from
the past. That means recordings of the telemetry and other data we received from the
Standfast,
and nothing else. We do
not
send analysis, or narrative, or calls for help. Just the
Standfast
data playback. We clear on that?
”

“
Ah, yes, sir. But given how bad this was—
”

“
No!
”
Koffield cut him off.
“
No matter how bad it was, especially
because
it was so bad, we do it
by the book.
Our job here is to
defend
causality, prevent paradox, protect history from anyone or anything that might try and use the timeshaft wormholes to alter the past or the future. We can
’
t do that if we start out by
violating
causality ourselves. I
’
m sure everyone on this ship has checked the operational rules by now. They allow us to send data from the past back into the past, and nothing else.
”

“
Yes, sir,
”
Sheelton said again, this time with a bit more spirit.

“
Very well.
”
Koffield didn
’
t like explaining his orders, but he was no fool. Everything had turned upside down for this crew. Nothing like this assault had ever happened in all the long history of the Chronologic Patrol. There were going to be people in this crew scared enough, shocked enough, that they might try and convince themselves it would be all right to bend the rules. He did not dare let that idea take root. Knowing the rules still applied, that the captain meant what he said—that would help hold them together.
“
In any event, I don
’
t think the drones will need to carry much more than the
Standfast’s
telemetry,
”
he said in a more gentle tone of voice.
“
When the folks back home see the attack on the
Standfast,
they
’
ll send every kind of support and reinforcement they can.

What more could any of us say that would make them send more than that?
”

“
Yes, sir,
”
Sheelton said.
“
I hadn
’
t thought of it that way.
”

No,
Koffield thought, looking at the young man, and straining not to reveal how old, how worn, he himself felt.
You didn’t think of it that way. And it hasn’t really dawned on you, or on anyone else, that we’re never going home. What happens when you realize that?

The whole system of defense around a timeshaft worm-hole was based on the uptime ship, the ship on the
“
future
”
end of the wormhole, being
in
the future, but not
of
the future. The uptime ship had no contact, no link, no knowledge of the uptime universe, or of the history of the years between the uptime and downtime ends. That willful ignorance ensured that the uptime ship had no hidden agendas, could not knowingly or otherwise exchange information with incoming ships, could not be suspected of manipulating events and passing the information to someone on the downtime side. A ship that arrived at the uptime guard post from the uptime universe would be utterly contaminated with all sorts of knowledge of the future, as seen from the downtime end.

But a patrol ship and crew that arrived at the downtime end and moved through the wormhole to the uptime guard post, and followed all the safeguards against receiving contaminated knowledge, could remain safely ignorant of the future during her tour of duty, and then withdraw back through the wormhole and go back home to the past, because her crew would know nothing of the future.

It was precisely because the
Upholder
had come from the past, and had prior contact only with the past, that the operational rules permitted her to send a courier drone bearing a sharply restricted report on downtime events. If the
Upholder
had been an uptime ship, even that limited contact would have been forbidden.

But the
Upholder
had seen the future and had acted to change it. She had become part of the future. By the act of doing her duty, she had been contaminated with information that could not go into the past, for fear of scrambling causality. Therefore, the ship could not return to the past, any more than she could send word of what had happened.

“
Keep me informed of progress,
”
Koffield said.

“
Yes, sir.
”
Sheelton shifted uncertainly in his seat, but did not stand up.
“
Sir, there is one other matter ...
”

“
What, Lieutenant?
”

“
Well, sir—The intruders moved uptime through the timeshaft wormhole, instead of just waiting for seventy-nine years to pass.
”

Koffield smiled sadly.
“
That one I can
’
t help you with, Lieutenant. I can
’
t figure it out either.
”

“
No, sir, that
’
s not it. I mean, I think I
have
figured it out.
”

Koffield looked at Sheelton in surprise, and then damned himself for a fool. Why assume that he had the only—or the best—mind on the ship?
“
Go ahead, Mister. Tell me.
”

“
Well, sir, the intruders had the portal nexi codes, or knew how to get around them. That gave them the
ability
to go through the hole. But why would they
want
to go through the hole, if they didn
’
t need to do any time travel?
”

“
That
’
s the question, all right,
”
Koffield said.
“
I
’
d gotten that far by myself. Is there anything more?
”

Sheelton reddened visibly.
“
Ah, yes, sir. I wouldn
’
t waste your time if that was all I had. What if it wasn
’
t travel—space travel, time travel, whatever—that they were interested in? What if it was the
wormhole
they cared about?
”

That notion hadn
’
t occurred to Koffield, but now the thought made his insides freeze. Now he could see what Sheelton was after, and he cursed himself again, for blindness far worse than his arrogance.
“
Go on,
”
he said.

“
A calibration run, sir. The only way to get exact, perfect data on a wormhole is to go through it, measure all the dynamics, and measure your exact temporal and spatial coordinates at either end. The
exact
data, down to the nanosecond and the micrometer.
”

Koffield nodded, still half in shock. Sheelton was right. It made sense. It was the only possible reason for making an uptime run through a wormhole.
“
Thank—thank you,

Lieutenant. That
’
s a startling thought. But I do believe you
’
re right. I do believe you
’
re right.
”

“
Thank
you,
sir,
”
Sheelton said, smiling broadly. He stood up and saluted again.
“
I
’
ll get to work on the courier drones at once, sin
’’

Koffield absently acknowledged the salute with a nod, and stared at the closed hatch long after Sheelton had gone.

Calibration run.
That had to be it. But if that was it, then there was a world of fresh trouble brewing. No one needed to measure down to the nano and the micro in order to travel through a wormhoie. In the scale of an interstellar trip, being five or ten minutes off in time, or a few hundred kilometers off target in space, was less than trivial. The intruders would only need that sort of precision data if they were planning to
retune
the wormhoie, reaim it, change it somehow.

Timeshaft wormholes—their creation, control,
”
tuning, and operation—were the exclusive province of the Chronologic Patrol. Before the intruders
’
assault, Koffield would have rejected out of hand the notion of anyone
’
s seizing control of a wormhoie. The idea that any group of outsiders would, or could, interfere with the Chronologic Patrol
’
s monopoly was absurd, impossible, on the face of it. But the intruders had done a half dozen impossible things already. Koffield was fully prepared to believe they could do one more.

But. If they had made the uptime run to obtain the calibration data, that meant they intended to
use
that data in some way. And that clearly implied something that scared the hell out of Anton Koffield. He was the master of a ship that was half-crippled, nearly derelict, and very definitely time-stranded after her
first
encounter with the intruders.

And if the intruders were planning to make use of that calibration data—then that meant the intruders were coming back.