Chapter One
Chapter One
The oddly bifurcated constellation of Serpens spilled across the sky, at least to the eyes of one who knew how to pick it out.
His ancient Greek ancestors, thought Jason Thanou, must have had one hell of an imagination, to see a snake among that chaos of stars.
Indeed, it must have taken even more imagination than had been required to discern a charioteer in the region of sky they had named Auriga. Heretofore, Jason’s interest in the descriptive astronomy of Earth’s heavens had begun and ended with that constellation, for on a moment’s whim he had once tried to pick out Psi 5 Aurigae, the sun under which he had been born on the colony planet Hesperia. But of course a mere G0v main-sequence star, though slightly brighter than Sol, was not a naked-eye object across forty-eight and a half light years, and after a single glimpse through a telescope he had lost interest.
Now, however, whenever he was in the right place in the right season for it to be visible, he found his eyes wandering to Serpens, and to one region in particular. He had used another telescope (a more powerful one, for the star listed as HC+31 8213 was somewhat less luminous than Psi 5 Aurigae and over fifteen light-years more remote) and picked out a tiny yellow-white gleam that had raised more gooseflesh than his home sun had. For he knew that there, well beyond the outermost periphery of human exploration and unknown to Earth until very recently, the descendants of people he had known and fought beside inhabited a planet named Frey. He also knew that their colony had been there for almost five centuries, since Earth’s year 1897, for he had been present at its inception.
To most people throughout history, that combination of thoughts would have seemed paradoxical to the point of lunacy. But those of the late twenty-fourth century could take them in stride, for Jason was a time traveler. Specifically, he was head of the Special Operations Section of the Temporal Service, enforcement arm of the Temporal Regulatory Authority that held exclusive legal jurisdiction of all ventures into the past.
He had also been the one to discover just how important—and terrifying—a qualifier that word legal was.
Alexandre Mondrago, the number two man in Special Ops, emerged onto the rooftop observation deck and cleared his throat. “The meeting’s about to start,” he said. “You’d better not keep them waiting.”
“Right,” Jason sighed. Serpens would soon be setting below the horizon anyway, for it was a northern constellation and it was now late southern hemisphere winter. Before many more weeks it wouldn’t be visible at all from this facility in Australia’s Great Sandy Desert which housed the great Fujiwara-Weintraub Temporal Displacer the Authority employed to send expeditions back in time.
But at the moment it could still be seen in the desert-clear moonless light. And Jason saw Mondrago’s profile, with its outsize nose, turn in the darkness to gaze in the direction of that constellation, which for him held memories of unbearable poignancy.
Jason sighed again, knowing he could never hope to fathom the full depth of the Corsican-descended ex-mercenary’s loss.
“Well,” he said briskly, before the silence could stretch, “I suppose I’d better get inside, as much as I dread it.”
“What are you complaining about? If they were going full speed ahead without asking for your input, you’d be bitching about that too. As it is, they even came here instead of summoning you.”
“I know, I know,” Jason grumbled as he went inside. Mondrago followed him, pausing to catch a final glimpse of Serpens.
The elegant conference room, in the style known as Third Neoclassical, was intended for meetings of the Authority’s governing council. But tonight only five people sat at the long, gleaming-topped table, for Kyle Rutherford had decided to use it for this meeting, given the importance of his visitors.
As host, and by virtue of his position as the Authority’s operations director, Rutherford himself sat at the head of the table—a spare elderly man with a neatly trimmed gray Van dyke, dressed in the dark, expensively fusty style affected by Earth’s bureaucratized intelligentsia. He and Jason were living proof that opposites do not always attract. Indeed, each possessed a positive genius for irritating the other. But Rutherford grudgingly acknowledged Jason’s capabilities. And Jason knew that Rutherford, for all his affectations, did not really share the pedantic impracticality of the governing council, against whose compulsion to interfere with the Service he could usually (not always) count on Rutherford for backing, if only in defense of his own administrative prerogatives. So, to a greater extent than either cared to admit, they understood each other.
Seated to Rutherford’s left was a massively built middle-aged man in the dark-blue service dress uniform of the Internal Defense and Response Force. General Viktor Kermak was the IDRF’s chief of staff, which made him the top military man of the Confederal Republic of Earth. Of course, the Republic’s stubbornly independent member states stoutly denied that the IDRF was a military force. But as a practical matter, the Republic’s security arm required the capacity to bring a certain amount of armed force to bear promptly and under conditions of security, without the cumbersome political negotiations, divided command and duplication of effort that inevitably accompanied any attempt at coordinated action by the five largest member states that continued to keep control of the means of waging large-scale space warfare. Form follows function, and the IDRF and taken on more and more of the aspect of a military service, including the traditional rank structure. (Unlike the Temporal Service, which the Authority primly denied was anything so horrid as even quasi-military.)
Jason sat beside Kermak. He had met the general in the course of planning his last extratemporal expedition, which had been a joint operation with the IDRF. That had been the expedition that had seen the founding of the colony of Frey, in the depths of Serpens. And it was because of their involvement in it that Jason and Kermak now sat looking across the table at the two people on Rutherford’s right.
Both of these individuals held seats on the Confederal Republic’s General Convocation, where each member state had only one vote but could send as many representatives as it wished. Both also wore other hats. Sadananda Naidu of the Hindustani Union was a prominent member of the Council of State, which carried out the Convocation’s executive functions. Irina Andreyevna Golodets of the Russian Federation served on another standing committee: the Deep Space Council, which administered the Deep Space Fleet. In fact, the Deep Space Fleet was a paper organizational abstraction, with the actual running of the fleets still in the hands of the admiralties of the member-states that owned them. But it could be called into actual being in an emergency, and it needed to be represented here.
There was none of the gaggle of staffers that would normally accompany such political bigwigs, and the room was as secure as the IDRF’s experts could make it. Jason devoutly hoped that was enough. In his experience, most governmental secrecy had no higher purpose than shielding politicians from accountability for their own self-serving stupidity. But in this case, it mattered. They were here to discuss a possible expedition to Frey, of whose existence only the highest placed had been allowed to know, and any leak of which could have consequences better not thought about.
At least, he told himself, he had reason to think these two were reliable, by the standard of politicians. Not a terrible rigorous standard, he reflected uneasily, even though he had met some of history’s better specimens of the breed. (He recalled Themistocles, arguably one of the best of the lot.)
After the initial introductions and formalities had been dispensed with, Rutherford proceeded briskly. “Inasmuch as Commander Thanou led the extratemporal expedition that eventuated in the founding of the colony of Frey, I will ask him to give us the benefit of his experience by summarizing what has happened to lead us to this discussion. Commander, you have the floor.”
“At the risk of belaboring facts of which you’re already aware,” Jason began, “I’d like to start by reviewing the overall background, starting three years ago—in terms of the linear present, of course—when I led an expedition to the Aegean Bronze Age to observe the volcanic explosion of Santorini in 1628 B.C. and its aftermath. This was by far the most far-reaching temporal displacement ever performed, taking us back into previously unobserved stretches of time. It was in the course of this expedition that we discovered, to our amazement, the existence of the Teloi, and the role played by them and their Nagommo enemies in human origins.”
None of this was news to Naidu and Golodets, but they were visibly uncomfortable. They had not yet adjusted to the knowledge that Homo sapiens was the result of genetic engineering performed on Homo erectus by aliens who had desired suitable slaves and worshipers to support their twisted pantomime of godhood. Nor to the realization that the beginnings of autonomous human civilization in lower Mesopotamia had been owed to a shipwrecked survey vessel’s crew of the amphibious Nagommo, whose race had smashed the Teloi but died doing it. But they could fully understand why all of this was still being kept from the generality of humankind, on whom its effects would have been difficult to predict.
“Fortunately,” Jason continued, “my colleagues and I were able to strand the first generation Teloi—the Titans, as they were later known—in their extradimensional ‘pocket universe’ by arranging for its interface device to be consumed in the volcanic cataclysm of Santorini. Subsequently, I led an expedition to Athens in 490 B.C. to observe the Battle of Marathon—and, incidentally, to try and ascertain whether any of the younger-generation Teloi were still alive and active, posing as the Olympian gods. We discovered that they were. We also discovered something else . . . something worse. Transhumanists.”
Now Naidu and Golodets were almost squirming, for Jason had pronounced a word that carried the same freight of meaning and evoked the same kind of visceral reaction that “Nazi” once had.
“It was bad enough, discovering that back in the last century the leaders of the Transhuman Dispensation, foreseeing defeat, had laid the groundwork for an extremely well-organized and well-equipped underground, which is still very active today,” Jason went on. “Much worse was the discovery that early in this century they had stolen Weintraub’s original work on temporal energy potential, and then gone on to anticipate Fujiwara’s application of it, but avoiding certain false trails Fujiwara followed, and producing a temporal displacer infinitely more compact and energy-efficient than hers. Worst of all, they were using it to change the past.”
Naidu looked deeply unhappy. “I’ve never really understood that last part, Commander. I always thought the Observer Effect prevented anyone from changing history.”
“History can’t be changed, sir . . . but the past can.” Seeing bewilderment, Jason explained. “Whatever you do in the past has always been part of the past, if you follow me. And if you don’t follow me, don’t be troubled; you’re in good company, including the last two generations of philosophers. No observed event can be changed. You can’t go back and shoot one of your own ancestors, or do anything else that’s going to create paradoxes. If you try, something will cause the attempt to fail. We have a saying that reality protects itself.” A bleakness entered into Jason’s soul as a stunningly beautiful black woman in flamboyant seventeenth-century garb swaggered across his memory. “I can personally testify that if you try to prevent a recorded event from occurring, like a loved one’s death, you’re as likely as not to end up being the cause of that event.”
“But . . . see here, I distinctly heard you say the past can be changed! Now you’re saying it can’t.”
“Observed, recorded history can’t. But consider how much of the human past is unrecorded. You can’t go back and shoot Hitler, because history says he wasn’t shot. But you can get involved in a battle of that period and shoot any number of nameless soldiers. If the Observer Effect lets you shoot them, it won’t affect the outcome of the war; those soldiers will always have been killed. And you can be assured that none of them was one of your own as-yet-childless ancestors.
“The Transhumanists are operating in the shadows, keeping to the vast stretches of time and space where the Observer Effect doesn’t apply. They’re filling those stretches with a kind of secret history, setting a multitude of biological, nanotechnological, psychological and sociological ‘time bombs’ that are all set to activate at a point they call The Day, when it will turn out that recorded history has just been a façade behind which real history has been silently building toward a Transhumanist return to power.”
Naidu’s face, normally the color of medium-strong coffee, seemed to acquire more cream. “But we’ve been unable to learn when that is?”
“Unfortunately, that’s true. But we have reason to believe that it lies not too far in our future. And we have managed to acquire a certain amount of intelligence about them—including the location of their principal temporal displacer, which the IDRF subsequently captured more or less intact, enabling us to reverse-engineer it.”
“An operation in which Commander Thanou was instrumental,” Rutherford interjected, unable to resist an opportunity to toot the Authority’s horn. Kermak grunted in acknowledgment.
“It was fortunate that we obtained Transhumanist temporal displacement technology when we did,” Jason resumed, “for we used it to follow up the discovery that the Transhumanists were engaged in time-travel outside the Solar System.”
“So we’ve been told,” said Naidu with a frown. “But I always thought it could only be done on Earth.”
Jason carefully didn’t let his exasperation show. “It can only be done within, and in relation to, a fairly substantial planetary gravity field, sir. But there’s no reason why that planet has to be Earth. It had just never occurred to us to do it anywhere else. At any rate, a joint Temporal Service/IDRF expedition went back almost five hundred years and discovered the most stupendous of all the Transhumanists’ ‘time bombs’: a colony planted on a world they dubbed ‘Drakar’ almost sixty-four light-years away.”
“Yes,” said Golodets, obviously still not fully recovered from the shock of the secret to which she had recently been made privy. “Stranded there in the past where it was meant to grow into an industrialized, militarized world of Transhumanist fanatics—an instant ally that would appear from space on The Day, without our ever having known it existed.” She shook her head as though to clear it of the nightmare vision of ravening space fleets sweeping in from the blackness beyond explored space. “But I gather you foiled their plot, Commander.”
Jason shook his head emphatically. “It wasn’t just me by any means, ma’am. Several IDRF personnel gave their lives, and one was stranded irretrievably in the past.”
“Major Elena Rojas,” said Kermak grimly. “One of my finest officers. And now maybe distant descendants of hers are my contemporaries, out there.”
“Equally indispensable were the slaves the Transhumanists had brought in for a labor force, some temporally displaced from our era but mostly contemporaneous, captured in remote areas of late nineteenth-century North America and India.” Jason smiled inwardly at the memory of a trio of disreputable British sergeants and a certain Indian bhisti or water-carrier, who had died heroically. “But their uprising almost failed, despite our help, because of the arrival of a warship of the Tuova’Zhonglu Teloi.”
“The . . . ? Oh, yes, the surviving Teloi we were told of, who have been wandering the spacelanes for thousands of years since their war of mutual extermination against the Nagommo.” Naidu nodded. “Another secret that has been kept from the public.”
“With good reason, sir,” Jason assured him. “They are fanatical militarists, raving mad even by Teloi standards. But they were stopped at Drakar thanks to the self-sacrifice of Dr. Chantal Frey.” Alexandre Mondrago’s lover, he thought. And a onetime defector to the Transhumanists—a sin she expiated with interest. “Afterwards, the former slaves, under Major Rojas’ leadership, renamed the planet ‘Frey’.”
“Very appropriately, I’m sure,” nodded Golodets. “But, Commander, one thing still puzzles me. This planet is only about fourteen light-years beyond our current periphery of settlement. Why did the Transhumanists plant their secret colony there, knowing we’d happen onto it before much longer in the normal course of our expansion?”
“That,” said Jason drily, “is one of the reasons we believe we don’t have much longer to wait before The Day.”
For a moment, the implications hung heavy in the air of the silent room.
“Well,” said Naidu, brusquely asserting control, “this colony of Frey is presumably still out there, after having had five hundred years to develop in isolation, and the point of this meeting is to discuss the advisability of sending an expedition there to make contact with it.”
“The Authority and the IDRF have both advised against that,” Rutherford reminded him.
“Yes, I know. This is why we’re here: to hear your reasons.”
“The same reasons we didn’t destroy the Transhumanist temporal displacer in the SS+28 9357 system which they had been using to go back in time and set up the Drakar colony. As Commander Thanou learned, the slave-catching expedition that scooped up him and his companions was the Transhumanists’ final trip to Drakar. Afterwards, they intended to leave it strictly alone, to avoid any possible Observer Effect issues. So as far as they know, their colony is developing as planned . . . and we know nothing of it. We want them to continue to cherish that belief, so we’ve carefully given them no indication to the contrary.”
“Now you understand the stringent security measures surrounding this meeting,” Jason put in.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Golodets assured him. “But our expedition would naturally be mounted in secrecy.”
Kermak answered her. “We still don’t know how far the Transhumanist underground’s sources of intel extend. They might get wind of the plan, and ask themselves why we should want to go to that particular remote system—a question to which there’d be only one possible answer.” The general might project the image of a blunt warrior, but like all top-level military officers in this day and age he was a politician as well, and Jason noted that he diplomatically left unspoken his opinion of the Deep Space Fleet’s sievelike security. “No. The smart move on our part will be to wait for The Day and then see the look on their faces when the space armada they’re counting on doesn’t appear.”
“And,” Jason added, “then and only then we should contact Frey and bring in our allies. Because what’s been growing there from small beginnings for nearly half a millennium is the mirror image of what the Transhumanists intended: a society whose foundation myth is built around hatred of those who enslaved them.”
Golodets leaned forward, and her broad Slavic face held them with its intensity. “I understand what you are saying, gentlemen. Only . . . when The Day arrives, and all these ‘time bombs’ on Earth that you haven’t ferreted out yet come to fruition, will we still be in a position to send to Frey for help? And will it be too late for that help to save us?”
Rutherford and Kermak exchanged an uneasy glance. Then they both looked at Jason as though they expected him to respond—perhaps, he thought, because of his unique record against the Transhumanist underground and its sometime Teloi associates.
“That is a legitimate concern, Ms. Golodets. It cannot be ignored. But the fact that the Transhumanists are relying on the arrival of an unanticipated military ally from beyond the frontiers on The Day suggests to me that they feel they cannot entirely rely on whatever they have prepared on Earth.”
“Hmm . . .” Naidu laid his hands on the table in a meeting-closing gesture. “Quite possibly a valid point, Commander. These matters must be deeply pondered before we reach a decision.”
And there they left it. Truth to tell, Jason was just as happy with the deferral of action, for he was deeply conflicted, with caution and curiosity waging their immemorial war. He had meant every word he had told Naidu and Golodets, but at the same time he held within him a quivering eagerness to attach himself to an expedition to Frey—as he would undoubtedly be able to do, given his role in the foundation of the colony—and see what the descendants of those he had known had wrought there.
And so matters stood a few days later, when Jason received a summons that would rearrange his priorities in a totally unforeseen way.