Time's Chariot (15 page)

'Voice recognition?' said Carradine.

'Precisely. Nothing special there. And Daiho
occasionally asks something called Register to
record something, or to provide information, then
remembers that Register isn't there. The other day,
Scott was on his own and he suddenly said –' he
scrolled through his notes quickly – ' "journeyman
Baiget, could you . . . oh, damn." Then he stood up
and walked out of the room to deliver his message
to Baiget verbally.'

'A constantly monitoring artificial intelligence?'
said Carradine.

'Accessible mentally,' said Alan. Carradine's eyes
widened and he continued. 'Our recordings of the
kids at work are eerie. They hardly say a word but
they work together like a machine. One wants a
tool, the other hands it over, just like that. They
have to be communicating – it's more than just
good teamwork. But – and this is the big one – it's
only in the hotel lounge, where all the equipment
is. Outside the lounge, they speak out loud.'

'They're telepathic?' said someone. Alan's
glance withered him.

'No, or they'd be able to communicate anywhere,'
he said.

'You conclude?' Carradine said quietly.

'There's clearly some kind of universally available
mechanism in the Home Time,' said Alan,
'and a local example is in their equipment, though
I don't know which of the many bits and pieces it is.
But it seemed reasonable to assume there's something
in their own heads that makes the
connection. And so, I asked Dr Gerard to X-ray
their skulls.'

'And?' Carradine said. All eyes turned back to
Gerard.

'There's something in there,' she said. 'There's a
cloudiness in all of their brains that isn't natural. I
showed it to a neurosurgeon and he immediately
diagnosed widely distributed brain cancer, which is
incorrect. As it is, I think it's something implanted,
which has since grown inside them. I'd . . .' She
coughed. 'I'd need to do a post mortem on one of
them to know more.'

'I see.' The silence around the table was
absolute. Then Carradine pushed back his chair
and stood. 'Thank you, everyone. Alan, that was
truly fascinating, and if the opportunity for a post
mortem turns up, we can discuss things further.
You'll let me have a copy of your report, of course?'

Rico Garron arrived in seventeenth-century
France ten minutes before the list said Daiho
was scheduled to appear in exactly the same place.
The site was a back alley in Port-Royal-des-Champs
near Paris in 1657, and the ambience of unwashed
humans and plentiful livestock hit him like a slap in
the face.

All around him the town was buzzing and – in
more ways than one – humming, but here in the
alley he was alone. 'Good choice,' he said to himself,
looking approvingly around. Yes, it stank and it
was gloomy and an open sewer ran down the
middle, but it was secluded and it was an excellent
transference point. Home Time smart drugs in his
system would deal with any diseases. All he had to
do was put up with the smell.

The one disadvantage was that when Daiho
appeared there was no way Rico could hide somewhere
nearby, so he would have to lurk at a discreet
distance. He squared his shoulders and walked
down the alley and out into the France of 1657. His
fieldsuit had tailored itself to make him look as
close as the France of the day could come to the
middle classes: a bygoner would think he was
maybe a factotum for some rich household, maybe
slightly seedy. Not rich and dressed out in glowing
finery, but not struck down with poverty either. He
nodded to a black-robed clergyman who turned
into the alley as he turned out of it: the priest
bowed slightly back.

Rico cast a glance back at the priest. If Daiho
appeared in front of him . . .

Well, one of the advantages of transference was
that it cut both ways. Tampering with probability so
as to insert the travellers into the timestream
disoriented the transferee but it also confused any
observer. Still, he steeled himself for any surprised
yells and cries of witchcraft. He might have to help
out a fellow Home Time citizen, albeit one engaged
in dodgy activity.

He leaned against a wall and watched
seventeenth-century France go by. Smelly, crawling
with germs – he loved it. Yes, the rich were very rich
and the poor were very poor; yes, people were
starving; yes, children were dying of disease and
malnutrition; and if he were somehow to get into
the French court then, yes, he knew he would find
a level of pomp and formality that made the Home
Time's patricians look like children in a nursery.
But out here, out on the street, it was all so refreshingly
not
the Home Time that he was prepared to
forgive its shortcomings.

Ten minutes later he was back at the entrance to
the alley, just as his field computer told him that the
transference he was awaiting was taking place.
Daiho was now in there and Rico lurked as only a
Specific or a correspondent can lurk, in plain view
and completely anonymous.

'How far to the convent?'

'A mile or so.' The voices came out of the alleyway
and made Rico frown. He hadn't been
expecting two of them. Daiho must have brought a
friend. Rico poised himself casually to follow them
when they came out.

'Why are we so far from it?'

'So that you need me to guide you there and
back, of course. You don't think I trust you, do
you?'

'It stinks here.'

'I thought you might like to savour the atmosphere.
I have to live in it, remember. And now,
parlez Français
.'

And two people appeared at the end of the alley,
talking together in seventeenth-century French like
old friends. They looked casually around, then set
off down the road away from Rico. One was the
priest and the other was Hossein Asaldra.

'You?' Rico muttered, eyes wide. He and Marje
had assumed that because Daiho authorized the
transferences, therefore it was Daiho doing
the transferring. But no.

And who was the priest? 'He met up with a
bygoner?' Rico murmured. No, the other man was
speaking the same language as Rico and Asaldra
always spoke. Therefore, the clergyman must be
another Home Timer. So why hadn't they transferred
together? Why had they met up here?

Radiating indifference, Rico followed the
couple.

Following in a straight line would be too obvious:
it only worked in the adventure zines. Rico set off
on a zig-zag route whose average course took him
after the two Home Timers. He would wander
across the road; study some livestock; engage total
strangers in conversation, actually asking for
directions but making it look from a distance like
they were old friends.

The disadvantage was that he was seldom near
enough to Asaldra and his companion to hear what
they were saying, and he really did need to know.
They seemed engrossed in one another: maybe
they wouldn't notice if he drew nearer. He began to
catch up, slowly and without fuss, and came within
earshot as they were passing a church. The tower
was covered with wooden scaffolding and a gang of
workmen swarmed over it.

'The Jansenists are very similar to Calvinists,' the
priest was saying, 'but they say they're strictly
Catholic—'

A shout of alarm and a snapping
twang
from
above made the priest, Asaldra and Rico all look up
together. A load of bricks was being hauled up to
the top of the tower and the pallet was spinning
dangerously while a snapped rope dangled beneath
it. Then another twang, another rope gave, and the
bricks began to fall. Asaldra and his companion
were directly beneath.

Rico's training took over.

'Look out!' he shouted, already halfway to the
two others before the words were out of his mouth,
arms outstretched to push the two away from the
danger. All his senses slowed down, taking in every
datum, every aspect of what was happening.

The bricks were halfway to the ground, and
suddenly the priest and Asaldra weren't there any
more. The priest had grabbed the frozen Asaldra
round the waist and spun them both out of the way.
Rico couldn't check his momentum and now he
was the only one in any danger. The bricks were
directly above him.

The priest, who had already moved impossibly
fast, moved faster. He let go of Asaldra, turned and
leaped back, catching Rico in a flying tackle around
the waist that knocked him backwards and
jarred the breath out of his body.

And the world returned to its normal speed as
the bricks crashed loudly onto the spot where the
men had been standing. Rico and the priest lay in
the dirt and looked thoughtfully at the heap for a
moment.

The priest climbed to his feet, brushing down his
gown with one hand and holding the other out to
Rico.

'You move quickly, my son,' he said.

'You move quicker, Father,' said Rico. He took
the hand and let the priest help him to his feet.

'Yes,' the priest said simply.

'Is your friend hurt?' Rico said. The priest
looked calmly at Asaldra, who leaned against the
wall, staring at the bricks. His eyes were wild, his
hair dishevelled and he was breathing fast.

'No,' the priest said. He walked over to Asaldra
and patted him on the back. 'Just a little shaken,'
the priest added.

'Father!' It had all happened so quickly that the
workmen in the scaffolding had only just got to
the ground. The foreman ran up to the priest, twisting
his cap between his hands. 'Father, are you hurt?
I must apologize for the neglect of my men . . .'

'No harm done,' the priest said mildly.

'But to have interrupted your journey with
this . . .'

'You didn't interrupt; we're where we want to
be.' The priest put his hands on Asaldra's shoulders
and guided him towards a door in the wall. Then he
looked back at the foreman and at Rico. 'Thank
you for your assistance, my son. Good day.'

The door shut behind them, leaving Rico and
the foreman looking at each other blankly. The
foreman, determined to apologize to someone,
began to apologize to Rico, who wasn't listening.
He was running through what he had just seen, and
thinking about it.

'Oh my God,' he thought.

'He was a correspondent,' Rico said.

'Nonsense,' Marje said.

'He was a correspondent!' Rico insisted. 'I saw
how fast he moved. I couldn't have done it, and I've
been trained for Specific Operations. No one
could. I tell you, he was a correspondent.'

'So.' Marje pinched the bridge of her nose. 'You
are saying Hossein Asaldra has befriended a correspondent?
You are saying Hossein has broken every
code of conduct in the book? You are saying—'

'You're still not getting it,' Rico said. 'The correspondent
saved my life when he thought I was just
another bygoner. He got involved, Commissioner. I
would say his conditioning has been quite severely
compromised, presumably by Mr Asaldra.' He saw
the look of irritation sweep across Marje's face and
got to his feet. 'What the hell. You wanted me to do
a mission, I did it. Use the results as you will.'

'I haven't dismissed you,' Marje said to his back,
bringing him up short.

He turned round slowly, and gave an ironic bow.
'I didn't ask you to,' he said.

'You didn't complete your mission, either,' Marje
said, and fury swept through Rico. Being treated
like a servant was one thing, but attacking his
professionalism . . .

'You didn't find out what Li Daiho was doing
there because it turned out he didn't appear,'
Marje continued, 'but did you bother to find out
what Hossein was doing there instead?'

'Actually, yes,' Rico said sweetly, 'but you won't
believe it, just as you don't believe my professional
opinion that your friend was talking to a
correspondent.' He turned to go again and this
time reached the door.

'Tell me. Please, tell me,' Marje said. The sudden
meekness in her tone made him stop. 'And I
apologize for doubting your professional opinion.'
He grinned, then carefully wiped the grin off his
face before turning round once more.

'Well, now you're talking.' Rico sauntered to a
chair. 'And this is why I came to make my report in
person, Commissioner, because I really didn't want
to say this over symb.'

'Blaise Pascal,' Marje said a bit later. 'No, I haven't
heard of him.'

'In 1657 he was living in a Jansenist community
in a convent in Port-Royal-des-Champs, France,'
Rico said. 'I looked it up. And a convent in Port-
Royal-des-Champs was what Mr Asaldra and the
correspondent were visiting.'

'And he was some kind of philosopher?'

'He was all sorts of things, according to the
records. A mathematician, a physicist . . . He
invented the first mechanical adding machine, he
showed how a barometer worked, and starting at
the age of sixteen he formulated mathematical
theories – including a theory of probability – that
we still use today. Some of his work even shows up
in Morbern's mathematics. Not bad for a preindustrial
bygoner, eh?'

Marje was pinching the bridge of her nose again.
'And Hossein went to see him. Why? I could
understand Li using his privileges to go and visit all
his heroes. It's illegal, but I can understand it. But
Hossein?' Marje took a breath. 'We're going to go
to the source.'

Rico looked alarmed. 'Um, is that wise?'

'Hossein Asaldra, please report to me at once,'
Marje said, glaring him into silence. A pause, and
then she frowned.

'Symb says he's not available,' she said.

Rico tried the same request and sure enough, his
own symb told him: '
Hossein Asaldra is not in the
Home Time
.' Which meant Hossein Asaldra was
either off Earth or dead.

'He remembered me,' Rico said suddenly.
'Remember when I was in the Commissioner's
apartment? He asked me if we'd met before. And,
for him, we had. He'd just escaped having a load of
bricks fall on him, so I probably wasn't the first
thing on his mind, but he remembered me . . .'

'And I told him you were going to do some work
for me,' Marje said.

Rico felt the thrill of the chase run through him.
'He must have remembered properly,' he said.

'He last saw you three hours ago, before you
transferred . . . three hours! He could be anywhere.'

'But that's not long enough to get off-planet.'

'He's transferred somewhere,' Marje said. 'It's
the only answer.'

Another symb query: 'He isn't on the transference
log,' said Rico. 'So, unless you know of any
unofficial transference chambers . . .'

'It was meant to be a joke,' Rico muttered. Smoke
filled the cavern and wrapped itself around the
single transference chamber, this time from
another freshly slagged bank of equipment. He
looked around him with appreciation. 'Quite a
find,' he added.

'Hossein showed it to me,' said Marje. 'He said a
power surge was detected, they followed it and
found this.' She pointed out at the original fused,
blackened console. 'That was the one that melted
down that time.'

Again, they were projecting; again, Security Ops
and technicians were there in the flesh, inspecting
the scene.

'When was this?'

'Two days ago.'

'So this stuff has been ticking over for centuries,
then we suddenly get two meltdowns in two days?'
Rico moved his projection over to the remains of
the consoles; first one, then the other. 'You know, it
wouldn't be difficult to make this happen. Charges
could be set that would be undetectable, but
enough to make this unusable.'

'For what reason?'

'So no one could tell where you'd been. Look,
Commissioner. The consoles are almost identical. Mr
Asaldra knew the transference would be detected, so
he set charges to make sure no one could know
where he was going and he transferred out of the
Home Time. He has a seriously guilty conscience.'

'But . . . but the first one? Why did that catch
fire?'

Rico pursed his lips thoughtfully. 'I imagine,' he
said quietly, 'because someone else transferred out
through this chamber a couple of days ago.'