The Seeds of Time (9 page)

An hour later the chopper came, in a turbulence of wind and noise. They were herded inside its belly, and it rose over the sea of parked cars, headed toward Boeing Field.

As the chopper banked sharply, Clio looked down, straight into the massive crater that now split the freeway in two. A dozen or so twisted cars were scattered within the crater’s puckered lips, some of them still burning.

Clio ran. There had been no missions, no work to do for six weeks, and she was getting soft, so she ran. Vanda’s track was a broad yellow stripe on one side of the main corridor, well-used most day periods; you don’t want to lose bone density, or muscle mass. You don’t want to lose your mind with the boredom, with being shut in. She veered off to the gym to cool down.

In the middle of her stretches, she looked up to see Brisher standing in front of her. Wearing a baggy saffron business suit.

“How was the run?”

Clio continued stretching. “It was swell.”

He watched her stretch for a moment. “You’re looking good, Clio.”

“Try to.”

“This running business. Do you find it pleasurable? Well-being, happiness, that sort of thing?”

Clio worked on her hamstrings. “No.”

“Ah. I suppose not. Mind on business, I suppose. Good practice, good practice.” He glanced quickly around the gym, then back at her. “I’m sorry, by the way, about what happened.”

Clio stopped and gazed at him, her expression fixed.

“About what you went through. With those men.” He glanced at her fleetingly, took a roll of fizzes from his breast pocket, squeezed one into his mouth.

“You mean when they beat me up and tried to rape me?”

Brisher looked to one side. A few people in the gym
looked toward Clio. Brisher said, in a lower voice, “Yes, about that. A bad business. I hate to think what might have happened if Hillis and Zee hadn’t fought them off.”

Clio got up, grabbed her towel, headed for the locker room.

“I can imagine what it must have been like,” he said, starting after her. “Just awful, just awful. If you ever need to talk about it …”

Clio stopped, turned to face him. “I’ve talked it out, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” This came out more rudely than she intended. Got to be nice to Brish. She conjured up a really good smile. “Thanks, though, OK?”

“You have to be careful, going Earthside, Clio. Can’t just sleep in the woods, these days. Too dangerous. Greenies, kooks, whatnot. Hate to lose a good pilot. Before her time.” He took a step closer to her, confiding. “You should be more careful, Clio. You and Hillis. These are dangerous times, even for a Dive pilot. Nobody’s immune.”

Clio remembered to breathe. “I always try to be careful.”

He nodded. “Good. Good practice, being careful.”

She made a beeline for the showers. He knew. Something. But how much did he know? There was always a hint behind his words. A warning. An invitation. She let the water sluice over her a long time.

Clio found HIllis in his room, stabbing at the keyboard, running a game. She watched over his shoulder until he won the round.

“Brish is watching us, Hill,” she said. “After the episode with stealing the specimen. He may know a lot of things, about you as well as me.”

“No. No, he doesn’t. All he knows is that I swiped a dead plant from the transition farm, and there’s nothing he can do about it, because he can’t admit he’s got retroids running around beating up people.” He punched in another round of Space Ace.

“Jesus, aren’t you worried?”

“We haven’t done anything yet.” Hillis blanked the
screen and swung his chair around to face her. He looked at her a long time, and she grew uneasy.

“What do you mean ‘yet’?” She sat on the bunk, with a sinking feeling in her belly.

“We’re going to take a Dive. We’re going up a couple decades, Clio. You’re going to take
Starhawk
to the future.”

Clio stared at him a moment. “I’m going to
what?”

Hillis sprang from his chair, and kneeled in front of her, taking her hands in his. “You’re going to take us to the future. Oh Clio, it’s possible, possible to see our future!”

“What are you talking about, ‘see the future’?”

“Zee broke through. The Future Ceiling. There isn’t any ceiling, we can go both ways. Zee did the math. No ceiling.”

Clio pulled her hands out of his. He was crazy.

“He’s been working on it for weeks,” Hillis said. “Turns out, it wasn’t that hard.”

“You’re saying Zee did what Vandarthanan couldn’t?”

“No.” Hillis sat next to her on the bunk, close, his blue eyes trying to trap her gaze. “I think Vandarthanan did it years ago. And I think we just never heard about it because the powers that be didn’t want us to hear about it. Anyhow, he’s dead now, so who’s to say? Point is, we can get to the future, same as the past. You see what this means?”

“Why would they lie about the Future Ceiling?” She pulled back, yanking her eyes away from his, desperately trying to keep some distance.

“So they can lie about the future. They don’t want us to know.”

Clio shook her head. “You think I can just jump in
Starhawk
, take her for a little spin? They’d
notice
, Hill. I’d be busted, we’d all be busted.”

Hillis sighed, took her hands again. “We’re not going to hijack the ship. We’re going to change the Dive boards during the next regulation Dive. Next mission.”

Clio rolled her eyes. “Oh
that
ought to work! Folks wake up a hundred years from now, and Russo’s too dumb to know where the hell she is!”

Hillis put his palms up, trying to quiet her. “Nobody
wakes up. We Dive up for a brief glimpse, then reverse directions and wake up with no one the wiser.”

“What if we see the end of the world?” Clio asked. “Is that real, or not? How can we change it?”

“I don’t know for sure that we can change it. But suppose the future is a possibility, not a certainty? Maybe we could do something to avert disaster.”

“Christ almighty, you guys are playing with theories! It’s never been tested You could kill us all, or worse.” She jumped up, headed for the door. “Forget it.”

He plunged after her, took her by the arm, stopping her. “Clio. This isn’t some college prank. Zee has it all worked out. And it’s about saving our future, making sure we
have
one.”

“We can’t get anywhere near Earth, Hill. At Dive point we’ll be out of range of sensors—we won’t be able to see a damn thing on Earth except clouds and the bluish tint of water.”

“We can still pick up electromagnetic transmissions.”

“We won’t have
time
to sit there and record radio and TV signals. Folks on the bridge will be awake. And they’ll be asking questions.” She was facing him, buying into this mad discussion. Goddamn him anyway.

“We don’t need time. We’ll record decades of broadcasting while we’re still
in
Dive.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t use signal receivers in Dive.”

Hillis smiled. “Sure you can. Zee …”

“… has figured it out,” Clio finished for him. She shook her head. “Why? Why do you have to do this? It’s crazy. You’re making me crazy.” Clio took his face between her hands. “Why?”

Hillis paused a moment. “I don’t want to make you crazy, or hurt you. I just have to know. I just have to know if it’s all over. If what we’re doing here, with Biotime, if it’s all a game. We know the Earth is greying, Clio. Every day. I can watch it from the monitors. I know it’s greying. I just want to know if it’s dying.”

Clio looked up at him, thinking, but not saying,
Why do you want to know? We’ll get there soon enough, the slow way. Then we’ll know. Knowing the future is a curse. You can’t hope for things, you can only wait for them, and it’s not the same. Not the same at all
.

But she looked up at his face, and said, “I can’t think about this anymore. It’s too crazy.”

“Sure,” Hillis said. “Let’s just leave it for now.” He went over to his desk, started pawing through the stacks of video games. He was pissed, but not showing it.

Then, he turned around, with one of those heartbreaking smiles. “Want to play a vid?”

Clio slowly walked over to the game console. He tossed her Debt Roulette. She lost and lost.

She got two stiff drinks in her at the station bar before Teeg walked in, collected his beer, and plopped himself down at her table.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you don’t seem to have a date, so you can hardly refuse.”

“I just did refuse, Teeg.”

“And I’ll buy you a drink.” He motioned to the waiter. “You sure got a long face. Booze make you sad? Some people, like me, it makes them happy. Luck of the draw.”

He took a long pull on his beer, and gazed silently at her for a few moments. Clio admitted to herself that she liked him better when he wasn’t talking. She smiled at him.

“God, you got a pretty smile,” he said. A stupid thing to say, but she liked it.

Jesus. Feeling flattered by Harper Teeg. To be that desperate, or that drunk. Change the subject, old girl
.

“So where’s your date, Teeg?”

“Me? Well it’s a very sad story. I’m pretty down on my luck.” The waiter brought her drink, and Teeg paid with a large bill, refusing the change. “You like those stricken types, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I just love weak men.”

“Well, I’m one of those. Stricken.” His brown eyes sparkled in mock anguish.

She braced herself for his next move, a half-mocking appeal for some womanly comfort, but he was already getting up, waving at some friends at the bar. He leaned over, grabbing his beer with an easy, muscular reach. “Guess you’re feeling quiet tonight. I’ll leave you alone. Sometimes I drink alone, too.” He moved off, turned around again. “But it’s never a good sign.” He flashed her a smile.

“Thanks, Teeg,” she said, feeling grateful, both for the visit and his departure. He wasn’t always so bad, in small doses.

She stared into her drink and thought about the Dive. Hillis’ Dive. Hillis and Zee and their science experiment. Just a little variation on the theme of time travel, over in a minute.

Easy. Just tamper with
Starhawk
’s Dive boards, load in an untested program, send ship and crew a hundred outlaw years into the future, take a quick look around and reverse time flow—another untested maneuver—and live to tell about it. Tell about the winner of the Preakness, next president, who dies, who gets rich, fate of the planet. Fate of Mom and Elsie. And Petya.

For better or worse, it’s the future. Our future, love it or leave it. If you can.

What if you could change the future, as Hillis thought? Do things differently, change outcomes? What was the future then? An alternate future, not fixed at all, but malleable? Like the ghost of Christmas Future, showing what might be, if you don’t shape up?

Clio finished off her drink. She placed the glass carefully on the napkin in front of her, no longer seeing it. Seeing instead what drove Hillis to do this thing. It wasn’t that he wanted to know the future. He already knew the future: the bald, grey Earth. But without proof, he was just a fanatic. And impotent to act. Once he knew with certainty, he would do the thing he was born to do. Exactly what, Clio didn’t know.

But she was going to help him.

She left the bar and made her way to Hillis’ quarters. He’d been on this path for years, but she’d never seen it. Hill was one of those people who cared enough to burn themselves up in a cause. Whereas she never got beyond her own personal horizons. Space Recon, keeping it all together. Mom and Elsie, those losses, always with her. Petya, lost somewhere between Fargo and Minneapolis, always with her. Whereas Hillis could give himself to something larger, something with lasting meaning.

She stood outside Hillis’ door. Knocked, walked in. And saw them. Hillis and Zee, sitting and talking on the edge of the bed, neither one wearing a shirt. The bed was a mess, the pillow on the floor, a bottle of wine opened on the desk.

Zee, startled by her entrance, jumped to his feet, met her eyes for an instant, turned away. He walked to the room’s only chair, flopped down in it, staring at the floor.