Time Salvager (37 page)
“Securitate,” Levin said, “these people did not know of James’s crimes. It’s not like he advertised this knowledge when he engaged them. A warning should be sufficient to discourage future dealings.”
Kuo sneered. “You’ve been with these savages for too long, Auditor. You’re soft. This won’t deter them or the other settlements that have betrayed the planet in the slightest. They need to be taught a lesson.”
“I appreciate the advice, Securitate,” Levin said. “However—”
“You are weak and impotent,” Kuo said. “It’s time you learned how Valta maintains their market share. We do not tolerate such abuses.”
“Belay that order, Monitor,” Levin snapped, stepping in front of Kuo and facing her. “Valta has no market share here.”
The edges of her lips curled and he felt the tingle of an exo powering up in close proximity. Where were her bands? He had never seen any on her person. “Are you sure you wish to challenge me on this?” she asked, taking a step forward.
He powered on his own exo. “Punishing the entire settlement in such a manner is criminal. I won’t allow it.”
The two stood toe to toe, exos powered up and flaring. The orange glow of Levin’s exo didn’t quite match the brightness of Kuo’s white. The pitch of her exo was different as well. Every military unit used exo technology in a slightly different way. Levin had no doubt that there was a very real chance that her exo—being corporate military—was more powerful than his, but he stood his ground.
Instead of powering his exo on and supporting Levin, Shizzu took several steps backward and slinked away from the conflict. Levin knew where that damned traitor would be if this came to a head.
“How would you like to proceed?” Kuo asked in a low voice. “Right here, right now, in front of your men? Let me ask you: What acceptable exit strategy do you think could come out of this? Did you actually think you could beat me? But let’s say by some miracle of the abyss you did, how do you think Valta will respond? Stand down, Auditor, you’re not my quarry.”
She was right. Levin’s pride was the only thing keeping his exo powered on at this moment. This was a lose-lose situation. Even if he stood down, any doubts his men had of what little authority he still had would be erased. He had lost his temper and was now paying the price. Kuo must have read his mind. He powered down his exo and felt her white field—hot and cold at the same time—pass through him until it enveloped them both, showing everyone within sight who was really in control.
“I am not unreasonable,” she said, “so I’ll save you some face.” She turned to Shizzu. “Auditor Levin has a point. Delay that order to execute them. Instead, take inventory of what these people received from the fugitive, and take it out from their stock. Burn the grain, destroy the technology, and kill anyone who tries to stop you.” She turned back to Levin. “Satisfactory?”
He nodded.
“Consider this your final warning, Auditor. Next time you power your exo on me, I will finish you.”
There was a bright yellow flash and James found himself floating in space over the moon of Hyperion. This time, he threw up, spewing the contents of his stomach out into space, splattering the inside of his atmos shield. He hunched over and watched as the bile floated away and coagulated on the wall of the perfect sphere. Well, from this point on, things were only going to get worse. He looked down at his quivering hands. They were numb; he couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers or his toes. He wiggled them. Nothing. Nine times in a span of two months; it was too much. And through all this, he hadn’t taken any miasma pills.
“Did you get what I asked for, pet?” Grace’s voice popped into his head.
“The entire stockroom, including the magnetic siphoner and gravity converter,” he answered once he was done heaving and found his voice. “I’m impressed the Technology Isolationists managed to hide a depot on Hyperion. I’d have thought with the moon’s chaotic rotation, no one would put a base there.”
“That’s why we put it there. We had dozens of these stations all over the solar system. This particular depot was particularly well stocked, since every other faction had written the moon off as useless.”
“Someone must have found it. There were traces of battle when I found the ruins.”
“The space-forsaken Neptune Divinities had caught on to these depots ten years earlier and were hunting them down one by one. They must have eventually found this one. Tell me there are descendants of those shits. After I cure the planet for your girl, I’d like to spend the rest of my days grinding them to dust.”
“A little long to hold a grudge, High Scion.”
“Call me Grace. My time with the TIs is over.”
In the two weeks since he had retrieved Grace Priestly, he had gone back in three more times: this time to retrieve raw materials from the TI depot, once for a cache of food, and once for someone widely considered the greatest geneticist to have ever lived. Unfortunately for that last run, Zing Ri decided he’d rather stay with his plants than heed the warning of a stranger. His plants ate him six minutes later.
Truth be told, none of these was the actual best option. They were just jumps that Grace and Smitt were able to identify as viable targets that wouldn’t cause large enough ripples in the chronostream. Though he had already broken the most egregious of the Time Laws, James really was still trying his best to stay within the spirit of them.
James made sure the containment of his netherstore was still intact when the collie pulled up next to him. Hopefully, this was the last find that Elise and Grace needed for a while. He had to rest, or at least get his hands on some miasma pills soon. The recent continuous trips had taken a toll on him physically as well as mentally. If he wasn’t careful, James was either going to lose his mind or have a severe cascading organ failure, possibly both.
Grace had taken over the role as his permanent handler, but hadn’t mentioned anything about his lag sickness yet. In her time, the longer-term consequences of excessive time travel hadn’t been discovered yet. She had to know something was wrong with him, or at least suspect he was ill. As long as Elise didn’t know, he didn’t care what the hell anyone else thought.
James entered the collie and plugged the netherstore into the ship’s power source. It was still several days’ journey back to Earth. He would also have to be more careful with his entry. ChronoCom’s surveillance and patrol activities had picked up of late.
The collie kicked on and began to skim through the black of space. Now was a good time to sleep. James had had very little rest recently and even less since he had picked up Grace. In the two months since the Elfreth had adopted their purpose, the tribe had prospered. Several of the smaller tribes had even asked to join. Now, the Elfreth’s numbers had swollen to over three hundred, more than any other time in recent memory. It worried James, though. It was just more mouths to feed and more supplies to maintain.
“Pet,” Grace asked in his head. “Why are you still so careful with my Time Laws? You’ve already broken the most important one. Why not just do what must be done at this point?”
“Because I still believe in them, or at least most of them,” he said. “The laws are there to protect the chronostream and not alter our natural progression, are they not?”
“Actually,” Grace said, “I winged several of them based on best estimates of quantum theory. You have to realize, time travel was still very new, and wasn’t as exact a science back then as it is now. I’ve been studying some of the annals of ChronoCom. I agree with most of it, but there are several theories that seem to defy physics. Like that Vallis Bouvard Disaster. It makes no sense for someone to implode that way.”
“Well, that and the fact that both you and Elise haven’t melted yet,” said James. It was a huge relief, actually. He had spent the first few days half-expecting Elise to one night combust into a fireball. “So there is no danger of that? I was worried about that with bringing you back as well.”
“I see no logical reason why. Take many of the Time Laws, both from myself and from ChronoCom, with a grain of salt. I was drinking heavily the night before I came up with the majority of them. Keep in mind that they are mostly there as a precaution. The technology has devastating effects if used incorrectly after all.”
James lay down on the bench and stared at the ceiling, his eyes tracing scars and blemishes that lined the interior. Each of them had a history. One particular jagged point on the side panel still had his dried blood on it from an ill-planned ambush by two bandits after a night of drinking on Despina Station. That dent on the floor was from the time he smashed his head when Puck pirates attacked the collie while he was in cryo.
“Grace,” he asked. “Why did you write the first Time Law? Why shouldn’t we bring people back from the past?”
He heard an audible sigh. “Of all the risks time traveling poses, bringing living beings back from the past is the greatest. The likelihood of a more advanced civilization abusing a more primitive one is high. What’s to prevent a government from going back to the day before Vesuvius buries Pompeii and enslaving the population? What about the Neptune Divinity Savior trying to back his dead son, or the Kuma Faction trying to undo their blunder at the Star Fortress? The Time Laws are there to ensure the integrity of the chronostream.”
“But I brought you and Elise back.”
“And I say you walk a moral gray line, even if it is for a good cause. There’s an old French saying: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“I thought the TIs were absolutists when it came to the morality of technology.”
“Only fools and sociopaths are absolutists, pet.”
James hesitated as he considered his next question. It was something he feared asking, but knew he couldn’t talk to Elise about it. He wanted her to hold on to her newfound hope. She needed her optimism far too much for him to bring it up. He knew Grace would have no such necessity.
“I have to ask: what do you think about Elise’s research, about the odds of a cure actually working?”
There was a long pause before Grace spoke. “She’s on the right track; the theories are sound. The research from her time period did indicate that the scientists were very close to a working prototype.”
“So it’ll work? You two can cure the entire planet?”
“Not a chance in space, at least not with what we have right now.”
“I … I…” James was speechless. “Why not?”
“Because, pet,” she spoke as if speaking to a child, “it’s a big problem that requires a big solution. We’re two scientists, an alcoholic—don’t deny it, James—and a mud-wallowing tribe in the middle of a dystopian wasteland. And I thought my odds were bad during my time.”
“So why did you sign on for this? Why are you helping at all if you think it’s impossible?”
“I didn’t say it was impossible, pet,” she said, “it’s a slim chance, but at least there is a chance. That, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m already living on borrowed time. I was supposed to die on the
High Marker
, remember? Mortality changes one’s perspectives and I feel that I owe mankind a better Grace Priestly than I’ve given them. Just because I’m one of the greatest humans to ever have lived doesn’t mean I left that footprint. Looking back, all I did was lead the Technology Isolationists to a catastrophic war. I would like my legacy to be something more.”
“I see. Thanks for the candor, High Scion.”
“For the last time, call me Grace.”
Fifty-six hours later, flying into the atmosphere under the cover of an Arctic storm and going low over the water to avoid detection, James made it to the collie parking grounds with his latest haul in tow.
Chawr and his crew leaped into action as James walked out of the collie. They were all still inexperienced and prone to mistakes, but they were improving. He still double-checked all their work, but they were dedicated and would become competent eventually. Eventually. They’d almost blown up the ship only twice.
Elise, as usual, called him on his comm band as soon as she found out he had returned. “You got the stuff for Grace?” she sounded eager with anticipation.
“I got you a present.” He couldn’t help but smile. Something about hearing the joy in her voice was infectious.
“I never thought I’d be so happy about an elevator,” she said. “No more seventy flights four to five times a day.”
James unloaded the materials out of the netherstore and ordered runners to carry them to Farming Tower One. “The parts are on their way up now. See you at dinner?”
“Afraid we can’t, James. Too busy up here. Besides, I want to get Grace cracking on the lift right away. Stop on up when you have a chance.”
“Will do,” he said. “We can go over the next present you want.”
James surveyed the hangar, which was nothing more than a half-buried parking garage, and waited until Chawr and his crew had attached the collie to the generator, which was powered by batteries charged by dozens of solar panels he had obtained through trade with settlements all over the world. Once a battery was charged, Chawr’s crew would run down and move the energy to the generator. It was incredibly inefficient and usually took four to five days, depending on the weather, to charge the collie fully for a long voyage. James didn’t know what in the black abyss they were going to do once winter came.
Some of the very long trips, like the one James took to pick up Grace and the more recent one to Saturn, required extended power. He had bartered for batteries at Earth’s black market in Bangkok. The cost to buy enough power to make it all the way back to the heliopause was most of the extra chronman bands he had stolen from Earth Central, including the two precious exo bands he had obtained from storage as backup. Now, relying mostly on solar panels, trips off-planet were probably no longer possible. He perhaps had enough levels in the extended power sources to make a round-trip to Mars or Venus, and then the collie would be Earthbound until he found another power source.
Hopefully, these new advanced TI items—the magnetic siphoner and gravity converter, according to Grace—would help solve some of their energy needs. The list of her demands had been long and he had given up sifting through her requests to see if each was necessary. He didn’t pretend to know her thoughts. Two things became abundantly clear to him after the first two days of giving her the breakdown of their situation: Grace knew exactly what was going on and what had to be done, and some of her ideas were so advanced and forward-thinking that he would have no chance of understanding them.
