Timegods' World (80 page)
Authors: L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy
Yet he laughed, and his laughter shook the forests, and drew thunder from the skies.
And the fallen angels stopped, and they listened, for they feared, for the sound was strange unto them.
But the strangeness of that laughter did not turn them; they listened and did not hear.
And their god was angered, and in his anger cast his thunderbolts upon the
highways and upon the wagons that traveled them and upon the seas and the ships that crossed them, and put his mark upon the very stones of the hills ere he departed.
highways and upon the wagons that traveled them and upon the seas and the ships that crossed them, and put his mark upon the very stones of the hills ere he departed.
He waited in the shadows of time unbeknownst, and bided his time until the millennium had come.
For again, the people who had been angels had forsaken their god and were proud in their handiworks and their contrivances, and raised their wings against their god.
The god of fire strode across the heavens and flattened the cities, and struck the ships from the seas, even those which were mighty, and picked the ships of the air from the skies, and twisted the iron ways into forms that confounded their makers.
All that and more did the god of fire, who laughed at what he had wrought.
For lo, the fallen angels did not cower, nor were they ashamed, nor were they filled with fear, but instead shook their wings against the sky and against the fires.
And they seized the eternal tablets of the god and were filled with wrath, and in their hearts they plotted and directed their ways against the very stars.
The winds of change wailed, and reached into space beyond the firmament and behind the time and twisted both and brought chill and the cold that was beyond chill onto the galef that reached even unto the home of the god of fire.
“So NOW YOU’RE a god?”
I realized that it was Sammis I had tied up in the slope chair and linked with a unit chain to the Aerie itself. The chain was loose enough that he could have escaped the moment I let go of him. But he waited.
I shook my head. The stillness was deafening, and it seemed like I was two different people—maybe a poor way to explain, and it didn’t excuse anything. Just easier, I guessed, to destroy and remold world cultures while letting the god side of me take the blame.
“Hardly. Just doing what’s necessary.”
“Eagle crap!” he snorted. “I saw the look on your face when you surprised me. You came in here like the god of fire. Wryan would call it psychotic disassociation or some such.”
I swigged some firejuice and finished off two battle ration cubes. One was a full day’s nourishment, but diving like I’d been doing was work.
The change winds were blowing. The sounds from downtime distance were nasty.
“It’s really much easier to manipulate poor unsuspecting sapients than face the real problem, isn’t it, Loki? Or should I still say, God Loki?”
Sammis or not, I could have punched him. He was right, at least about it being easier to deal with out-time cultures, and I might as well face it. I’d have to sooner or later.
“I didn’t notice you doing much about it, great original Tribune.”
“You’re right,” he sighed. “One stint as the god of death was almost more than I could handle.” His eyes turned black, as if they had seen an even deeper Hell, and never forgotten. “That’s a problem we all have, those of us who decide to stay sane, Wryan says. Life is often too easy and too long to face the hard decisions. We plan and watch and wait and hope, and go along to some degree with the schemers. I’d hoped you’d be different, especially after your head-to-head confrontations with Heimdall.”
I was ready to go and was replacing my power cells, another burned-out gauntlet, packing up more eternasteel tablets, and finishing off the firejuice in the beaker.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re strong enough to take on the entire Guard in a single battle, I sometimes think, and win, and yet you never raised your voice after you came back from Hell, never said a word.”
“Neither did anyone else,” I reminded him. Hell, the ones who thought the Guard had done wrong just hung back and hoped I’d do their fighting for them, and the others hoped they wouldn’t have to fight. Well, now it was my turn.
I swung on the carrying case.
“How will you stop Heimdall? Unless you do, he’ll stop everything you’re doing.”
I halted, caught in midstride, but both riddles were crystal-clear, oh so clear, and with them, the response to Sammis’s questions.
Sammis insisted I was a god. So did most of the Guard, both those who supported me and those who opposed me. And with that lineup I had assumed the choice was simple—either you’re a god or you’re not. I knew I wasn’t, not in terms of my own definition of a god. But the definitions weren’t the real questions, and I’d been hung up on definitions, just like everyone else.
Without even understanding my questions, Sammis had flamed that right to the point. “Who” wasn’t the question. Nor “what,” but rather “how.” Like “How are you going to deal with what you are?” Like “How will you stop Heimdall?”
That second “how” I could answer. Now. The other would come, had
to come, and soon. But first—Heimdall and the Guard, for Heimdall was only a symptom of what the Guard was becoming.
to come, and soon. But first—Heimdall and the Guard, for Heimdall was only a symptom of what the Guard was becoming.
“Actions speak louder than words. Or definitions, Sammis.”
“Wait.”
His voice was lost as I slid across the skies of Query to the Tower, glittering as it rose from the Square to challenge the sun.
Without their tools, their sources of information, Freyda and Heimdall could not undo what I had done. They could not locate, except by trial and error, the turning points to which they would have to send other Guards.
I ducked under the edge of time and broke out in Assignments, flaming, lightnings gathered to my chest, but only Giron stood at the main Assignments console, his mouth opening wide at my appearance.
“Out!” I ordered him, for I did not wish him harm.
Without fanfare, I unleashed my energies across the consoles to leave fused metal, twisted plastic, and acrid smoke as witnesses to my visit.
Assignments was only the beginning, only the start, for the information remained in the data banks—two million years of data on history and parahistory. In the deepest depths of the Tower, levels below the Maintenance Hall, locked in behind walls that would halt a battle cruiser, were the memory banks, the lattice crystals that held the information amassed through millennia.
I bypassed the walls, breaking out inside the sterile confines, skip-sliding down the dim rows of lattices, flinging lightnings before me, and dropping animater cubes behind me.
With a final toss at the core, I ducked fully undertime and slid into the sunlit sky above the Tower.
Though the muffled sounds of explosions rumbled through the ground and the Tower trembled, the massive, buried, and time-protected walls surrounding the physical storage area held firm. The data banks themselves had not been so lucky, I knew.
More as a gesture than anything, I gathered more power from the air around me and flung a last thunderbolt at the steps in front of the South Portal and scored the glowstones with a line of black fire that would live within the stones for eons.
I turned my attention to the past I must create anew. I needed to choose from the possibilities left on my list, for the moments of hard decision would be coming soon. Heimdall and Freyda and their cohorts would be grouping already, and would be scheming on how they could stop my efforts.
Mightier men than I—Tribunes and rulers of sharks and peoples—had deceived themselves into thinking that their works were permanent,
and I was only a man, whatever immortality, whatever weapons of the gods I might bear, whatever delusions it might take for me to remake a small corner of a single galaxy. To myself I would have to answer, not for what I might be called, or for the name I refused, but for what I had done, and would yet do.
and I was only a man, whatever immortality, whatever weapons of the gods I might bear, whatever delusions it might take for me to remake a small corner of a single galaxy. To myself I would have to answer, not for what I might be called, or for the name I refused, but for what I had done, and would yet do.
Along the way I had a score to settle, somewhat indirectly, which might cloud the change winds more.
I time-dived from the sunlight and the sky above the Tower toward Gurlenis back until, flicking in and out, back and forth, I could sense another link to Query, a figure breaking out into the sky above nomads’ tents, where gentle wanderers camped—or at least ancestors of the green-bronzed philosopher I had met in a paratime instant … an instant that was not and would not ever be, yet would.
To break into another’s previous past-time was a feat thought impossible, but determined as I was to do it, I bent and broke the fabric of those instants to my will.
AND THE PURPLE of the night was sundered into fragments, and each fragment was a song, and the peoples of that time bowed and prostrated themselves then before the song. For not only was there music in the heavens, but fire.
The god of fire, he who was called Loki, raised his arm against the other, who was called Zealor, and a god of time in his own right.
And Zealor called upon Loki and begged of him mercy, and asked that his days not be numbered. But Loki the god of fire was not dissuaded and turned the lightnings of fire and the powers of time against Zealor, and Zealor was no more.
The wanderers who beheld the fires that exceeded the stars saw, and covered their eyes, and were filled with awe.
He who was called Loki laughed, and the sound of his laughter brought waves to still lakes, and caused the leaves of the trees to tremble. When he had laughed and lowered his hand, behold, where once there had been a mount was a holy place, and thereupon the god of fire placed his holy writ for his chosen people, lest they forget.
As I DROPPED undertime, shivered, the die was cast. After having killed my own, knowingly and deliberately, even though he had refused to turn from his mission, and no matter how noble my reasons, the time of denying my own responsibilities, my own failures to take stock, had passed, and passed forever.
Sertis, good old stable, always mid-tech Sertis, was next, and the revolution of fire would strike the unexpected to fan the no-longer-gentle winds of time-change into the true hurricane of time.
The king-emperors of Sertis had ruled because they controlled the water, and thus, the minds and power of Sertis.
Water enough existed, but it was locked into the polar caps and the plateau glaciers.
I headed for the fiftieth century before my own birth.
THE GOD OF fire appeared and struck his lances upon the ice that had been, that had crowned the far poles, and the ice and the snow were no more, but became as boiling water, and broke their boundaries and sundered the mountains that confined them.
Pillars of fire and soot were there also, of red and of black, and when the ruler of the place called Sertis felt his throne quake, asked that ruler of his generals the cause.
And they knew not, save that the fires of Hell had appeared at the far poles, and that the ice had departed, and the water had come.
Then the soldiers of the armies were afraid, and heeded not their commanders, nor the voice of their ruler.
And when the priests appeared before the assembled peoples, neither were they heard, but were offered by the peoples as sacrifices to the god of fire; and the god listened and left unto them his holy book that his will might be done.
THE WINDS OF time-change screamed as I crossed them on my time-vault back to Query.
Would I exist when I was done? Had I become as a man who had never been born or died, a god with no beginning and no end, and neither worshippers nor deniers?
From the undertime the planet Query would be shaken, twisted, bent like a leaf in a tempest assaulted by the change winds out of time. For each wind from the pasts I altered would create its own winds, and the second winds would blow unto the third winds, and no man or god would know his place while blew the wild winds of time.
In and out of time, solid as I approached, stood my Aerie, as stood the Tower of Immortals.
“And now?” asked Sammis, as I broke out and began to replenish my stores of destruction.
“The rest will come, Sammis. The rest will come.”
I noticed he was free of the chain. He had been waiting for me, and he was waiting for me to speak again.
“By the way,” I asked, “how and why did you and Wryan fake her death? Little lapse of tense, old god. And why did you provide all the behind-the-scenes assistance?”
In retrospect, all of it seemed so clear. Only Sammis could have
maneuvered so cleverly. Sammis gently provided suggestions, and the Guard listened. Stupid of me not to have seen it. Wryan planned, and Sammis executed, even that first test to determine my capabilities. I saw not just what Sammis was, for he was Sammis Olon, but the others—my parents and Baldur.
maneuvered so cleverly. Sammis gently provided suggestions, and the Guard listened. Stupid of me not to have seen it. Wryan planned, and Sammis executed, even that first test to determine my capabilities. I saw not just what Sammis was, for he was Sammis Olon, but the others—my parents and Baldur.
Why had it taken me so long to see the obvious? How my parents had stayed on Query long enough to give me what I needed. And Baldur—from the generator to the time-changes flickering on Terra—how he had left for Terra to create legends and shape all the differing Terran cultures with facets of our own, and with his insistence on the importance of understanding technology. Or how—the list was long, too long.
“It wasn’t that hard,” answered Sammis, who stood there nearly forgotten, “not with all the distractions you and Heimdall and Gilmesh provided. Wryan and I were ready to leave earlier, probably would have, except that when you came along, your father asked … and we kept hoping—”
Sammis wasn’t that pure, and I cut him off. “How many did you test? Over how many years? How many were too scared to dive again? Old god, don’t dwell too much on idealism! What kind of will does it take to follow the same course for centuries upon centuries? What kind of power is that?”
All the time I was talking, I was replenishing and watching the man I had accepted as Sammis Olon.
Time, subjectively and objectively, was short, and I girded myself for another dive, another series.
“Goodbye, old god. Where’s Wryan?”
“Where she’s always been, great-great-grandson and young god. She and I wish you the best.”
That stopped me. Why was he finally admitting openly that he was my great-great-grandfather? “Why are you finally admitting it?” I snapped.
“Because you always want someone else to admit things first. If they won’t, you hide it. Part of that is the brute strength of youth, but when you grow up it tends to become just stupidity. Things are, whether you want to admit it or not.”
I swallowed.
As he talked, the memories were there—“great—granddaughter of Sammis Olon,” the stories of the Guard—and other remembrances … looking up at someone crying, seeing a look that might have been concern—or fear.
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