Time's Chariot (25 page)

'Oh,
shit
!' Bera said. 'Run. And you –' he
pointed at Alan – 'go somewhere else or I use the
synjammer.'

They ran, pounding through the undergrowth.
Branches slashed at Rico's face, brambles reached
out to trip him. Bera and Su were drawing ahead.

'Come
on
!' Su urged from up front.

'You can see! I can't!' Rico shouted. Just behind
him he could hear Asaldra, similarly unequipped
and crashing through the undergrowth. He ducked
to avoid a particularly large branch and ran into a
trunk. He fell back onto the ground, dazed.

A pair of strong hands grabbed him under the
arms and hauled him to his feet.

'You go on,' Alan called. 'I'll bring him. Come
on, Mr Garron.'

'I've got you,' Su said behind them. She was talking
to Asaldra, not Rico. 'Just follow me.'

For just a few moments, Su and Alan used their
enhanced vision to guide Rico and Asaldra through
the dark, but then light burst onto the scene as the
three helicopters finally reached them and bright
white light blazed down through the canopy. The
downdraft of the rotors picked up the mulching
leaves and swirled them about in the roar of the
three engines. Branches and shadows whipped
about in a crazed dance that made the going even
more hazardous.

'Remain where you are.' An amplified voice
echoed over the engine noise. 'We have picked you
up and you can't escape. The estate is sealed off
and armed guards are on their way.'

'Yeah, yeah,' Rico muttered. The three machines
were directly overhead, all jostling for position and
the glory of catching the fugitives, and the noise
was deafening. Helicopters weren't that useful
when it came to apprehending people in forests,
Rico thought, as he summoned the energy for one
final sprint, with Alan still at his side. There was the
problem of getting through the branches.

Up ahead, maybe fifty yards off, he could see Bera.
The Specific had stopped running and was looking
back at them, waving, urging them on. So, that must
be the recall point. Bera finally twigged that the
people he was meant to be rescuing weren't doing
very well and he took a step towards them.

The voice was at it again. 'I said, stay where you
are. You can't get away and you're only making
things worse. You—
look out, you idiot
!'

And then there was a crash, and a screech of
metal tearing into metal, and the frantic
whip whip
whip
of spinning metal suddenly liberated from its
mounting and slicing through the air . . .

. . . And a bright orange
whoomph
as a fuel tank
exploded, and the two helicopters that had collided
tumbled down into the trees. The blast knocked
Rico to the ground and he instinctively curled into
a tight ball as bits of red hot wreckage and razor
sharp, twisted steel hurtled through the air in all
directions.

He picked himself up gingerly. Ahead, the forest
was ablaze, an inferno that he could never get
through. The flames lay between him and the recall
point.

'Close one,' he commented, looking over at
Alan. 'That was . . .'

He stopped. Alan was lying still. Rico reached
over and prodded the man's shoulder. Still
nothing.

With his heart in his mouth, Rico turned Alan
over. The correspondent's chest was one large hole,
gouged out by a piece of wreckage. Alan's eyes were
open and blank.

Rico's world went cold and empty.

'Oh no,' he breathed. 'Oh, no. Please. No.' He
drew his knees up and wrapped his arms round
them, and he sat and looked at Alan.

'Rico?' A gentle hand on his shoulder. He took it
and squeezed it, without looking up.

A thousand years, almost. War, plague, famine
and Europe's Middle Ages – this man had come
through them all. Convicted by the Home Time for
who knew what misdemeanour, sent back to serve
his sentence, innocently trusting his far-future
masters, used and abused by them right from the
start . . .

And it ended in a forest, with a lump of helicopter
wreckage in his chest.

'Rico, I'm sorry,' Su said. He gave the hand
another squeeze, then darted a venomous glare at
Asaldra. The other Home Timer was picking himself
up from the forest floor, brushing himself
down, and he couldn't tear his gaze from the body.
He had the sense to keep quiet.

Voices were shouting through the trees. Rico
didn't move.

'I don't know what you did in the Home Time,'
he said, his voice shuddering in his throat, 'but you
didn't deserve this.'

'Rico, we've missed the recall,' Su said.

'Uh-huh.' Rico reached out for Alan's left wrist,
lifted it up, glanced at the watch there. It was just
past midnight. He angled the display so that Su
could see it.

'Ah, well,' he said.

'Oh, God,' she said.

A light pierced the dark and picked him out.

'Don't move!' shouted a voice.

'We're not going anywhere,' Rico said calmly.
Guards pounded through the bushes, wincing at
the heat of the still blazing fire. They surrounded
the Home Timers, guns raised, and Su and Rico
just looked at them. Asaldra put his hands up and
Rico at last felt the familiar feel of a recall field
enveloping him.

'Hello, boys,' he said, and all three Home
Timers vanished.

It was just after midnight on Saturday 21st May,
2022.

Recall Day.

Rico came abruptly out of the post-transference
daze when someone tripped over him. He was
sitting on the floor of the transference chamber,
still in the hugged-up position in which he had left
the twenty-first century. It was darker for him than
it usually was in a chamber because he was
surrounded by people who were standing. The man
who had almost fallen over him found his balance
again and stumbled back into the man behind him,
who stepped to one side and bumped into the
woman next to him, who . . .

'Hey, hey, careful! I'm down here!'

The person next to him reached down and
helped him up. Rico realized it was Su. He pulled
himself to his feet, fighting the mass of people
around him. The chamber was packed: men and
women of all colours, shapes and sizes. There was
little talking, not even murmuring. These were
correspondents, conditioned to keep themselves to
themselves, and not even the fulfilled promise of
Recall Day was going to break them out of their
usual reserve.

Asaldra was there too and his face was split by an
enormous smile.

'Recall Day!' He seemed genuinely happy. 'Well,
well. I'm sorry this spoils all those plans you had for
me, Op Garron.'

'What do you mean? We're back in the College,'
Rico said.

The old smugness was back. 'Recall Day is
twenty-seven years after our own time. Assuming
they haven't abolished the statute of limitations,
anything I ever did wrong is long forgiven.'

'Rico,' Su whispered, and that brought Rico's
mind neatly back to a far more important point
than the possibility that Asaldra was going to get
away with everything. Her face was ashen. Su had
left a husband and child back in the old Home
Time. Tong would now be almost due for retirement,
her kid would be an adult, and to them, Su's
non-return twenty-seven years ago would have been
as good as bereavement.

Rico wormed one arm round her in the press of
people and held her tight. 'Oh, Su, I'm sorry,' he
said quietly. She rested her head on his shoulder
and trembled.

The doors to the chamber swung open and a
voice spoke. It was friendly and resonant with
welcome and love.

'Correspondents, welcome back to the Home
Time! Please follow the red lights.' A stream of
lights appeared in the air above them, flowing from
the centre of the chamber and out of the doors.
The correspondents waited a moment longer, then
obediently began to shuffle forward.

One of them stumbled and caught herself; then
another, and another. Rico glanced down. Oh, yes.

'Make way, people,' he called out, jabbing a
finger down at the floor. 'Dead person.'

A few curious glances down at Alan's body, but
not many.

'Yes, that's right, keep going,' Rico said. 'Follow
the light. Just keep moving . . .'

Five minutes later the chamber was empty except
for Rico, Su, Asaldra and the body. Rico looked
down at Alan.

You're back where you wanted to be
, he thought.
At
least one of us made it
.

'Can I have your designations?' said a bright
voice. A man and a woman in College yellow stood
in the entrance, wreathed in amiable smiles.

'Sorry?' said Rico.

'Your designation?' the woman repeated. 'Is your
conditioning at fault, maybe? You didn't follow the
lights, you see . . .'

'Don't worry about him,' said the man, following
Rico's gaze down to the body. 'We'll get a clean-up
squad to take care of him.'

Rico bristled. 'He will be buried with full College
honours,' he snapped. The two stewards took a step
back, presumably not expecting that sort of tone
from a returning correspondent, let alone a correspondent
who knew what the College was. 'He will
not be
cleaned up
. Got that?'

'I, um . . .'

'Please excuse my colleague, he's prone to overexcitement.'
Asaldra stepped forward. 'My name is
Hossein Asaldra; these two individuals and I were
accidentally caught up by the general recall. Do you
have any instructions concerning us?'

'Mr Asaldra?' said the woman. The two stared at
him as if he had just announced his divinity to a
waiting world. Rico had the horrid feeling they
were about to fall down at his feet and worship. 'Yes,
of course we do! And you two must be Ops Zo and
Garron? Do come with us.'

'We'll see your friend is, um, looked after, Op
Garron,' the man said. Rico let his gaze hold the
man's eyes just long enough to impart an idea of
what would happen if his friend was not looked
after, and ushered Su after the woman. Asaldra had
already stepped boldly forth.

The arrival scene in the chamber had been a
microcosm of what was going on out in the main hall.
Every chamber on every level was disgorging correspondents.
('If your designation is BC, please follow
the blue lights. If your designation is AD, please
follow the green lights.') No one seemed to be
bothering with decon – Rico imagined this quantity of
people would overwhelm the automatic systems and
every correspondent would get individual treatment
instead. He whistled and it was a strangely loud noise,
because despite the quantity of people, the only
other sound apart from the background announcements
was shuffling feet and jostling bodies.

'Did we leave anyone upstream at all?' he said.
The woman didn't catch his meaning.

'Oh no, all our people will have been recalled,'
she said. Then, to the air: 'I have Mr Asaldra and his
companions here.'

'
This is Field Op Garron
. . .' Rico symbed to back
her up, before realizing he was getting nothing in
return. Of course: he had destroyed his symb
implants back in the twenty-first century. It was the
least of his worries right now. And . . .

What exactly was going on? 'Mr Asaldra and his
companions' seemed to imply that some fame had
accrued to all of them in the intervening twenty-seven
years – but to Asaldra in particular.

'Hossein!' An eidolon appeared in front of
them. A woman in late middle-age, red- haired,
gazing at Asaldra fondly. 'Oh, how I've missed you.'

'Hello, Ekat, darling.' Asaldra's smile seemed
more fixed. 'I'm back.'

'And to a hero's welcome,' the Ekat woman
assured him. 'Well done.' She gave Rico and Su a
glance that seemed to skim off the top of them,
then looked back at Asaldra. 'Hossein, I hope you
don't mind, but we arranged a press conference
and everyone who's anyone is dying to meet you, or
at least symb you. If you're not too tired after your
ordeal . . .'

Asaldra might have been born for this moment.
He seemed to puff to twice his size and his proud
smile could have illuminated the entire
transference hall. 'Not too tired at all, my dear. I'll
just need a moment to freshen up and then I'm all
yours.'

'Just follow me,' Ekat said, and her eidolon
drifted off. Asaldra took a moment to look back at
the two Ops.

'What did I tell you?' he said quietly. 'I expect I'll
see you around.'

And he was off.

It was all too obvious. Asaldra had powerful
friends, and they had been laying the groundwork
for his return for the last twenty-seven years. Here,
he wasn't the not-especially-bright stooge of Li
Daiho; he wasn't the man who had managed to be
outsmarted not once but twice by the correspondent
he had been so ready to use. Rico didn't
know if Daiho's work had borne any fruit, but if
Asaldra wasn't now the man who had saved the
Home Time then he was at least the one who had
busted a gut trying.

'Rico,' Su said, her voice still a whisper.

'I know, Su, I know,' he said gently.

'I can't symb. It's telling me it won't accept my
connection. I can't even find out about them.'

'Hello, Mr Garron.'
It was a man's voice, and familiar enough to
make Rico turn quickly. It came from a ball of
marker light, hovering in the air behind him.
'Welcome back to the Home Time. And you, Ms
Zo.' Familiar, yes, but Rico couldn't quite place it.
'Will you come this way, please?'

Su only looked at the light blankly. Rico still had
one arm round her and he could feel she was still
trembling.

'Are you with the College?' he said. 'Op Zo has
family . . .'

'I know all about both of you,' the light said.
(
Whose voice was that?
It hovered just the wrong side
of recognition . . .) 'Please, come this way – that's
all I'm allowed to say.'

'Who . . . ?' Rico said, but the light was already
drifting off, so Rico and Su forced their way
through the mass of correspondents, who were
finally being sorted into more specific groupings
('Sixteenth to twenty-first centuries AD, please
follow the yellow lights. Eleventh to fifteenth
centuries AD, please follow the blue lights. Sixth to
tenth centuries AD . . .'), and followed.

After a brief spell in decon the light led them out
of the hall and into the corridors and chambers of
the College. Rico had been wondering if there
would be some kind of red carpet laid out for the
returning lost Field Ops, but apparently not. No
one even gave them a second glance. Maybe the
enquiry into their non-return had judged them
incompetent and an embarrassment to the College.
Maybe, under the new version of history, they were
the villains who had obstructed Asaldra in his noble
work and they had been struck off the rolls.

'See, the conquering hero comes,' he muttered.
The layout of the place was the same, the cut of the
clothes slightly different, not one face recognizable.
And the whole place was strangely quiet, subdued,
as Rico thought might be expected on the last day
of the Home Time.

They came to a carryfield and were whisked
away, with the light following. Rico suddenly had a
suspicion what was happening.

It'll be a party
, he thought, with a grin.
They're laying
on a welcome-home do. Maybe not everyone, but Su's
family are bound to be there, maybe her grandkids too
. . .

Except that they were not heading in the
direction he would have expected.

'We're going to the Outsider's Quarter?' he said.

'We're going to the Appalachian Consulate, Mr
Garron. All the regular College accommodation is
booked up for today.'

'I haven't been having good experiences with
Appalachians recently, you know,' said Rico.

The voice was amused. 'I know.'

They came to the barriers of the consulate,
where Rico and Su had to get off the carryfield to
walk. The light beamed a clearance code at the
guards and they let the Ops through.

'Almost there,' said the light. They stopped outside
an apartment and the light faded into
nothingness, just as the door morphed open.

The apartment held a man and a woman, coming
towards them.
Not a party, then
, Rico thought,
and failed to keep the disappointment off his face.

The man was smiling broadly. 'Come in, please.'
The voice was the same as the one that had led Rico
here. 'How do you do, Op Zo. We met briefly, you
may remember. Op Garron?' He looked Rico up
and down. 'I remembered you as taller and older,
but then I was slightly smaller and a lot younger.'

Rico studied the man in return. Dark hair,
maybe a touch of grey, early to mid-forties . . .

The penny dropped as they stepped into the
apartment and the door closed behind them.

'You're Jonjo!'

'Jontan Baiget, Mr Garron.' Jontan smiled and
held out his hand. 'And this is Sarai.'

'Hello.' Sarai smiled broadly and held out her
hand. 'I never got a chance to thank you.'

Jontan said, 'The Register asked us – well,
ordered, but we were happy to oblige – to be here
to meet you. He thought you'd like some familiar
faces.'

'I never thanked you either, Op Zo,' Sarai said.
Her smile was still wide and genuine as she held her
hand out to Su. 'I can still remember—'

'
For God's sake!
' It was almost a scream and it
made Rico, Jontan and Sarai jump. Su flung herself
away from Rico and stood facing them. Her hands
were balled up into fists. They quivered with
emotion, her whole body shook and it looked as if
she was about to throw herself at one of them and
pound him to pieces. 'Will you stop nattering
and tell me
where my family are
?'

'Your family?' Jontan seemed baffled. 'I've no
idea, but I could find out, if you like.'

'You mean, the Register didn't tell you?' Rico
said. Sarai and Jontan were completely nonplussed.

'But why should it?' Sarai said.

'Well, you know . . .' Rico stepped over to Su and
gently took hold of her shaking wrists. He rubbed
them together but didn't take his eyes off Jontan.
'She might have appreciated the information. She's
got a lot of catching up to do with them, you know.
Twenty-seven years and all that.'

'Catching up?' Jontan looked at Su in surprise.
'But, I mean, you go back, don't you? They won't
miss you for a moment. Everyone knows that.'

'To use a complex legal term,' Jontan called over
the hiss of the water, 'they tried to buy us off. And
to use another, we took the money and ran.' He was
sitting in a comfortable chair just inside the door of
the bathroom. Su and Sarai were in the next-door
suite, where Su had been promised an identical
freshening up and debriefing.

'And you're still together,' Rico said as he
scrubbed under his arms. 'I wouldn't have guessed.'

'Sorry?'

'Still together.' Rico raised his voice to get it
through the shower partition. 'Ah, this is good.
This is
good
.'

'Not
still
together, we got back that way. I mean,
yeah, we were kids in love, but a few weeks
upstream wasn't enough to make us spend the rest
of our lives together. But then the Patrician's Guild
paid off our service to Holmberg-Chabani-Scott to
dissuade us from pressing charges of abduction
against them, and Holmberg-Chabani-Scott gave us
a farm each for the same reason.'