The Seeds of Time (61 page)

“You stopped him, Meg,” Clio said. “You did right.”

Ashe swayed against the bulkhead and toppled, senseless, to the floor.

“What’s with him?” asked one of the crew.

Clio looked down at Ashe, fallen like a giant tree. “Can’t stand the sight of blood,” Clio said. “Take him to his cabin.”

They were all asleep on the bridge. Outside the viewport at Clio’s left, the stars left snowy tracks in their rush to the future. The ship was in Dive. The killing of a DSDE agent, with a ship’s officer involved, was no small matter, but nothing would keep Tandy from this Dive.

Clio, seated in the copilot’s chair, scanned the bridge crew’s faces—Voris, Hocking, Singh—all asleep. Singh’s eyelids fluttered as though behind those heavy lids he frolicked, swept away by some dreamtime Bacchus. Hocking’s head had fallen back against his headrest. A blatting snore rose to a crescendo, then subsided amid flutish moans. Voris slept like a child, her arms cradling her torso. She was under ship arrest pending an investigation, but meanwhile she sat her post.

This would be the last time Clio would see Meg Voris. The thought was not without some relief. Voris of the simple beliefs and crowd of words, always leading with her chin. Clio had treated her no better than the rest of the crew had, by turns derisive and distant. But here was the only person on the bridge who drew the line against the bastards—publicly, her life and career on the line. Maybe at the hearing, she would do OK, if things hadn’t gone so far that DSDE could put a gun to the back of a young man’s head for losing his composure. Maybe, she would keep her bars, her freedom. Earned them, by damn. It occurred to Clio then that Voris was—against all likelihood—her friend.

She turned away from the crew’s sleeping forms.
Jesus, girl, get a grip
. The cabin wavered, as the Dive distortions rippled simple vision, reflecting the overemotional
frame of her own mind deep in Dive. Get a grip. Chronometer racing forward, Dive fleeing by, leaving the past in a headlong rush from Niang.

Clio unclipped the seat restraints and stood. Time to get this show on the road. So little time, got to hurry. No time for looking at faces. She stood, pulled the zipper of her flight togs down far enough to grasp the chain around her neck and pull out her dog tag. The tag was flesh-warm, almost hot. It read:
Clio Finn, 6747NRP, Biotime Corp USA, 11-7-92, Vandarthanan Station, Central Administration
. Just so. No hometown, no next-of-kin, just Central Administration. In the event of her death, this is where they would send her personal effects, her files and final paycheck. The tag might have read,
Clio Finn, Dive Pilot, daughter of Evelyn, sister of Petya, 11-7-92, Upham, North Dakota. In case of death or alternative future, contact Meg Voris, Vanda Station
. And, as epitaph,
“Don’t Tread on Me.”
Then, remembering the Issaquah Quarry, perhaps
“Queen of Hell”
might do. Or, passing on Mother’s homespun advice,
“No one can keep you from what you put your mind to.”
Maybe that last one, then. Clio hung the chain around Voris’ neck, and tucked it into her flight suit.
Give ’em hell, Meg
.

She scanned the console one last time, the chronometer surging past three thousand years, time a-wasting. Time to burn, all that time. She shook her head to clear it, and headed off flight deck for officers’ quarters.

Tandy’s room was overwarm, releasing the tincture of scotch from a half-full glass on the sideboard. Clio leaned against his cabin door, taking her bearings.

The sitting area was empty. Tandy would be in his sleeping nook behind the screen to her right. Ahead of her, the wall of viewports beckoned with their staggering prospect of a billion stars. Ashe was not, of course, waiting for her, still out cold as he was on his bunk belowdecks. Licht must have pumped him full enough to bring down a bear. Clio planned to find the FTL circuit as soon as she could, then wait by Ashe’s side until he roused. If still in Dive they might escape in good order. If not … they must
somehow fight their way to the landing bay to escape in
Sun Spot
. With a hostage they might get away clean.

The near stars streamed past the viewport, in hyper-velocity, but framed between the sideboard and the wardrobe like a surrealistic window on another reality. Which indeed it was, the macroreality, the surrounding sea of stars, vast and everlasting. She snapped her attention back to the task at hand. The circuit board.

Clio began at Tandy’s desk, pulling open the center drawer. A personal thing, a man’s desk. Feels like voyeurism, feels like what it is, thievery. The contents of the drawer displayed themselves in immaculate order. She palmed stacks of papers, envelopes, tissue packets, files, his maroon Waterman fountain pen, ink fillers, a packet of Life-savers. Ran her hands under drawers, lifted the desk pad, comm unit.

Similarly, the sideboard with its stock of crystal glasses, scotch, brandy, and two bottles of fine Chardonnay. Those last might be saved for a special occasion. But whom would he share them with? She pushed away the thought that it would be her. Probably he had a crony or two. Perhaps an off-shift glass with Singh now and then—or even Hocking, might not be all that bad for an hour’s company. And even as she thought it, her deeper mind said, False, false. Singh and Hocking never once sat over a drink to talk with Tandy, they never shared more than a formal and awkward officers’ mess, after which each rushed back to his separate duties and the comfort of his own opinions, like soft, round stones cradled in the hand and worn smooth by frequent handling. None of them had the slightest interest in the others. Perhaps, too, Tandy had not the slightest interest in
her
. What did he know of her, really? Claimed to know her, yes, claimed to count on her, gave her his gun, but didn’t know her.…

She patted the sofa pillows, threw them on the floor, feeling in the creases. Replacing the pillows, she moved to the side table. There, the beguiling face of Suzanne Tandy, pretty in a delicate sort of way, too fragile for the imposing silver frame. Suzanne looked on with disapproval as Clio
opened the table drawer, thrust her hand into its empty confines.

Now she turned and surveyed what was left. The bedroom. Looked at her watch. Still over an hour. Plenty of time.

Just behind the sleeping partition in the dimness, Clio could make out the shadowy bed and Tandy’s sleeping form. She turned up the lights. He lay passively, at ease, though in a military way, while she rummaged through each drawer, under the mattress and bedclothes, then the bathroom. Nothing.

Looking into the cubicle one last time she noted the bed’s reading light fixed to the wall with a gold-colored metal base. She drew closer, pulled on the lamp. It swung away from the bulkhead, revealing a small safe with keypad. Clio stared at this for a long while. Not that there was any question of attempting to break the heavy safe with ordinary tools. But the presence itself of the safe meant her search was over. And her hopes, also, hopes of making a clean break during Dive, the fantasy of the safe escape, and Tandy never the wiser until they came to him, saying,
Clio Finn’s gone, sir. Apparently in the lander
.

Clio gave the main cabin a cursory second search. In the sideboard, bottom drawer, the .45 still lay. She checked the chambers. Fully loaded. She could take it, but if Tandy awoke and looked for it, he would have early warning of her intentions. Where was Ashe when she needed him? Lying there out cold and useless, when he should be here helping her search. Ashe should be waiting in the sleeping cell for Tandy to awake, then force him to hand over the circuit board. Clio should be on the bridge as ship came out of Dive. That’s how it should have been. Now she could wait with loaded gun pointed at Tandy’s head … but not knowing if Ashe was awake or not, then what would she do? How could she contact Ashe’s ship? It was a mess.

She shut the drawer with its gun, glanced a last time at the privacy wall in front of Tandy’s sleeping cell, then left his cabin and made her way down to crew deck, and down to Ashe’s cabin.

He lay on the bunk, unconscious like the rest of crew, but with a difference: she didn’t have any idea when he would wake up.

“Timothy!” Clio shook him. His shoulder barely registered her rocking.

“Timothy,” she called again, close to his ear.

His eyes opened to slits, fell shut again. “Timothy. Goddamn it, Timothy, wake up or I’ll slug you!” No good. He slept peacefully while she paced the tiny cabin, measuring out the moments, precious moments of Dive time. Their best chance to steal the circuit board and the lander was ticking away, and he slept on like there was no tomorrow. Then, reminding herself there were drugs to modify effects of drugs, she yanked open the cabin door and ran down the corridor to medlab. Here, the dreadful scene of Licht and Petya and Meg: Licht standing, arm stiff and gun thrust against Petya’s temple, cocking the gun, the explosion, the imprint of blood on the bulkhead. She pushed open the medlab door, strode to the nearest drawers, yanking them open, searching for something, anything to pull Ashe from his slumber. She slammed the drawers shut one after the other, until she thought to look into the portable first-aid kit. There, a dozen capsules of mazicon. She grabbed two and flew back down crew deck to find Ashe as she’d left him.

She rushed to the bed, and knelt by his side. Drops of sweat from her forehead darkened the collar of his Biotime greens. “Goddamn it, Timothy! Just wake up, will you?” She broke a capsule under his nose, then another. His brow furrowed, pulling the forehead scar inward like a needle registering her voice, and slept on. “Timothy,” she cried, “what am I supposed to do? This ship is flying itself, no pilot on the bridge. I haven’t found the circuit board. Everybody’s gonna wake up any minute. What am I supposed to do?” She slapped his face. “Just come back, baby. Just come back.…” Her stomach was in tatters. She rummaged in Ashe’s desk for food, found a box of Milk Duds, ate them one by one, wishing it were hemlock, sitting on a chair and
staring at Ashe’s lumpen form. “Goddamn it, Timothy,” she said, her mouth full of chocolate. “Goddamn it.”

“Like a trooper. Swear like a trooper,” Ashe interrupted. His lids were half open, revealing cloudy eyes.

“Timothy!” Clio ran to his side, hugged him, then batted at him. “We have to hurry!”

“OK. Hurry. Sounds good.” He sat up, then slumped against her.

“Shit! Goddamn shit to hell!”

“Anyone ever rinse your soapy mouth?” he said into her shoulder.

“Rinse my mouth out with soap? Yes. Lots of times, it really works.” He flopped back down. “We are doomed,” she said at him.

“Attagirl. A for attitude.”

“Don’t you get it?” Clio quit tugging on him. She jumped up. “Don’t you know what’s going on here?” Clio’s voice was already an octave high and rising. “We’re coming out of Dive any goddamn second. We haven’t got the circuit board and we haven’t got your ship lined up to get us the hell out of here. While you’ve been sleeping it off, I’ve gone through every square inch of Tandy’s quarters and come away with nothing. Zip, null, and zero. I don’t have it, Timothy. We’re screwed.”

“I figured,” he slurred at her. “Water.” He reached toward the washbasin.

Clio sloshed a glass full and brought it to him. “What did you figure?”

He gulped the liquid down. “Figured we wouldn’t find it. In a safe, right?”

“Yes, its in a safe, damn it! So you figured I wouldn’t find it!”

“Figured. But Tandy … can find it. Hands it over, we hit the bridge, take a hostage and escape in the lander. More water.”

Clio fetched it, fighting the urge to douse him with it. “How can you be so damn smug! This is exactly fifty times as dangerous as our first plan, and you don’t even care!”

He swung his feet onto the floor, sitting now in a
wobbly upright position. He took a moment to get his bearings. When he looked up at her his eyes locked on hers. “I care. I care a lot. I just figured it would go this way. I was prepared, Clio. You weren’t.”

“You let me believe a fantasy.”

Ashe’s face darkened. “Oh no, Clio, you built that fantasy all by yourself, no help needed. You were terrified of confronting Tandy, so you let yourself believe he hid it under his pillow, and you’d find it while he was out cold. Well, you gave your plan a try. Now it’s time for mine.” He rose, carefully. “How much time we got?”

“Twenty minutes, I figure. No more.”

Ashe nodded. “You ready?”

Clio nodded. She grabbed his elbow, steadying him, and propelled him toward the door.

“I’ll secure the bridge,” he said. “Signal my ship. Wait there for you. When you get the circuit, meet me there.” He pulled away from her arm. “You go ahead. I can walk.”

“We’re going up together.” She watched him sway in place. Any moment he would crash to the deck. She turned to open the cabin door. Stopped.

“He saved my life, you know.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard this before, Clio.”

She resisted the tug on her arm as Ashe moved to open the door. Memory replayed. It released an anesthetic glue, rooting her feet to the floor. She saw herself sitting on the barracks floor, the cold, thin wood as cold as her heart, and Tandy’s arm around her shoulder, and she, climbing back from the cave of death, and only his arm to lean on in all the wide realm of despair.