Time's Chariot (2 page)

'And where is it you come from?' he said.
'Cathay?'

'A good guess,' the Correspondent said.

'Why did you send this to me?'

'I wanted to show you my intentions were sincere.
I wanted to talk to you and I would have you
assured in advance that I am no charlatan.'

'You wish to discuss medicine? I am your
obedient servant.'

'Actually, no, not medicine,' the Correspondent
said. Abu Ali was a polymath, a fluent thinker in
many subjects including medicine – indeed, his
medical works would still be reprinted as
authoritative in Europe in the seventeenth century,
though before long orthodox Islamic theologians,
more worried by his heresies than his habits, would
have his work very well suppressed in the Arab
world. That wasn't why the Correspondent was
here. 'I would talk to you of the
Kitab ash-Shifa
.'

'You have read it?' Abu Ali leaned forward
eagerly.

'I have.' It was a white lie – Abu
Ali's Kitab
ash-Shifa
, the misleadingly titled
Book of Healing
, was
a collection of treatises on Aristotelian logic, metaphysics,
psychology and the natural sciences,
amongst other things, and the Correspondent had
a full copy of it in his head. 'I am interested in your
thoughts on Actuality and Nothing. Or to be more
precise, the Potentiality that lies between the two.'

No one comes an unknown distance, perhaps
from Cathay, seeks out the author of an obscure
book, draws an accurate and precise map of the
human circulatory system to get his attention, and
then asks to talk about Potentiality. From the tilt of
Abu Ali's head it was obvious he didn't believe it,
but he went along with the game, perhaps out of
curiosity.

'An interesting subject with which to while away
the hours,' he said. 'Potentiality? Well, we know
that nothing truly changes.'

'Do we?'

'Of course! For change to be real, something
must come out of nothing, which is plainly nonsensical.
The only change can be in an object's
substance –'
a reasonable description of the conservation
of energy
, the Correspondent thought – 'yet before
the change there is no sign of it.'

'So the object must have the potentiality in it for
that which it is to become?' the Correspondent
said.

'Precisely!' Abu Ali was forgetting his curiosity
and talking for the love of it. He leaned forward and
his eyes gleamed. 'Potentiality is what does not exist
but which could—' He stopped. The
Correspondent waited politely for him to continue,
but Abu Ali was looking over the Correspondent's
shoulder. 'Who are you?' he said. 'I . . . I did not see
you come in—'

The Correspondent turned quickly to see the
newcomer for himself. He was considerably more
worried than Abu Ali because even his enhanced
senses had not detected anyone's approach.

The newcomer was dressed like someone from
Isfahan but he had skin paler than either Abu Ali,
who was a native Arab, or the Correspondent, who
looked like one. He had not come in by door or by
window – the Correspondent would have heard
him. The man opened his mouth and the words
that came out would have been babble to Abu Ali,
yet to the Correspondent they made perfect sense.

'Is this Avicenna?' It was the language of the
Home Time, and he gave the name – a Western
corruption of
Allah ibn Sina
– by which the Arab
philosopher would one day be better known, by
those who knew of him at all.

'Why, yes.' The Correspondent made to stand.

'Stay seated,' said the man, and it was as if a
heavy weight had fallen on the Correspondent's
shoulders. The man raised his hand towards the
philosopher and a light shone from a small, dark
globe that he was carrying. Abu Ali froze, then
brought his feet slowly together, letting his arms
dangle limply at his sides. Hypnotized, perhaps, but
not knocked out. The newcomer walked forward,
took a crystal from his pocket and held it to Abu
Ali's temple. The crystal changed from blue to red.
'He won't remember this.' The man pocketed
the crystal again and studied the chart of the
circulatory system that remained in Abu Ali's hand.
'This was a good idea, RC/1029. You had better get
on with your interview.'

'Who . . . who are you?' said the Correspondent,
echoing Abu Ali but still more uncertain. 'Are you
another Correspondent? Why—'

The man smiled a mirthless smile. 'Enough
questions,' he said. He held up his hand
once more, the light shone again and the
Correspondent's mind went blank.

Ricardo Garron woke from a dream where
someone was calling his name over and over
again.

Someone was. A familiar voice pulsed by symb
into his thoughts.

'Rico? Come on, Garron, wake up. I can't believe
. . .
Rico!
Wake up
—'

'Su?' he mumbled into the pillow.

'
You're asleep, aren't you?
' He could only hear her
voice but he could picture his partner perfectly. Su
Zo was a dark, oriental woman and her short frame
would be trembling, unsure whether to laugh or be
angry.

'I was.' He shifted in his bed and wrapped the
quilt more firmly around himself, determined to
get at least another ten minutes.

'
I'm coming to get you. Taxi says I'll be there in five
.'

'Here?' Rico frowned. Something was nagging at
the back of his mind. Normally he and Su met up
at the College at the start of their shift, but . . .

'Oh, frak,' he shouted as he jumped out of bed.
'Just let me shower . . .'

'
You forgot, didn't you? I can't believe you actually
forgot
. . .'

'I remembered when I went to bed,' he said,
defensive.

'
Five minutes, Rico
.' Su cancelled the symb.

The entfeed started automatically on his
favourite channel as he went into the shower and
he just caught the last few minutes of one of the
leading soaps. He loved counting the anachronisms
which he could then compare with Su once they
got to work. Imperial Romans in motor cars,
medieval knights with computers, that sort of thing.
Today it was a Victorian lady going off to join a free
love commune.

'Load of crap,' he muttered, angling his head
into the flow of warm air to dry his hair. The
College that he worked for made all the resources
of humankind's rich and glorious heritage available
to a waiting world, and rubbish like the soap opera
was the result. A Fossil Age writer had once used
the term prolefeed, and to Rico that perfectly
summed up 99 per cent of everything the College's
data was used for. Yet he couldn't avoid a feeling of
professional pride that he was partly responsible –
he, Su and others like them. Most people in
the Home Time were content to lap up what the
College supplied, but he and his colleagues went
out and got it.

He was fully dressed and dry when the door
chime went. The gelfabric of his suit slid around
him and styled itself into the College uniform of
yellow and red. He symbed for the door to open
and drew himself up with a proud beam when Su
stepped into the suite. She looked him up and
down as if checking he had remembered to clean
his teeth and put his shoes on.

'You only just made it, didn't you?' she said.

Rico grinned. 'Been ready for the last ten
minutes. Where were you?'

'Come on, then,' she said, and they went out to
the taxi together.

The taxi, a hollow sphere with a transparent
membrane and a padded bench all around its
circular cabin, rose up, and up, and up. Azania
ecopolis, Rico's home, fell away and spread itself
out below: a fully self-sustaining, environmentally
enclosed city of fantastic shapes and colours; parks,
lakes and buildings sculpted from the artificial land
coral that covered most of the inhabited Earth's
surface. Sparkling in the subtropical sunshine, it
was a beautiful sight.

Within a minute the taxi was too high for small
details to be picked out. By the time it reached the
forcefield that officially marked Azania's upper
limits, the shape of the southern end of Africa – a
riot of greens, browns and blues set into the darker,
royal blue of the sea – had become evident. Above
them the sky was dark and the brighter stars were
showing. Then the taxi was through the forcefield
and had gone hypersonic, and the end of Africa fell
away with noticeable speed.

A few minutes later it braked down from transit
speed as it arced down through the atmosphere
towards Antarctica. Its passengers felt only a slight
deceleration pressure. They knew the invisible
barriers that the flying sphere was passing through.
It was targeted by missiles and plasma bolts and
several terawatts-worth of anti-aircraft energy
weapons, and every quanta emanating from it was
subjected to extreme scrutiny by the College's
defences, for a sign of bogusness. The College took
its security seriously.

The dark bones of Fossil Age oil stations passed
beneath them and then the College itself came into
view, sparkling white like the land around it and
perched like a miniature city overlooking the Ross
Sea. A city, not an ecopolis; the College had been
built in the era of old time cities, before the first
ecopolis had been grown. The College was made of
old fashioned steel and concrete and plastic, not
land coral, and the outlines were straight and
regular: the truncated pyramid that was the transference
hall and a host of smaller shapes, like a
child's collection of play bricks.

It never seemed quite right to Rico. For the last
four hundred years, and for the next twenty-seven,
men and women had been able to walk in the same
streets and breathe the same air as Shakespeare,
Al-Nasir, Einstein, Kennedy, Genghis Khan, the
Director, Beethoven, Persaud, Mozart, Galileo,
Dabrowski. All those journeys started and ended in
this place. Yet where were the streams of taxis bringing
time travelling tourists from their ecopoloi to
the holiday of a lifetime in Imperial Rome? Where
were the bold hunters going on safari among the
dinosaurs? Where were the eye witnesses to the Five
Bomb War? They were there, but they were either
College employees or rich patricians with time on
their hands. The people of the Home Time were
happy to feed on the correspondents' reports and
to enjoy the vicarious pleasures of Earth's myriad
civilizations, but only in the sanitised safety of the
Home Time; only in their cosy, regulated, artificial
homes. When it came to real history, the people just
weren't interested.

Two minutes later Rico and Su had arrived; ten
minutes later they were no longer in the Home Time.

Some hours earlier, Marje Orendal too woke to a
symb signal, an alarm pulsing into her mind.

'Wha—?' she mumbled. 'OK. I'm awake. What
is it?'

'
Dr Orendal
.' A voice she might have recognized.
'
May I project?
'

'If you must . . .'

Marje symbed the lights of her suite to come on,
and sat up in bed. The eidolon of a man appeared
on the other side of the room, and his eyes widened
when he saw her.

'I'm sorry! I didn't think . . .'

'Where did you imagine I'd be, ten seconds after
waking up?' Marje squinted at him. Awake, and
with a face to put to the voice, she recognized him.
'What is it, Hossein?'

Hossein Asaldra's face showed a certain
hesitation before he spoke. 'I've been asked to ask
you to come to the College at once,' he said.

'Whatever for?'

'Something I'd rather tell you face to face, Dr
Orendal. May I meet you in the transference hall in
twenty minutes?'

'Are we going somewhere?' She saw just a brief
shadow of irritation cross his face. 'Yes, certainly,'
she said. 'Twenty minutes.'

After he had gone, she took a quick shower and
field massage, though not too quick to avoid going
through her daily ritual of reciting Morbern's
Code. Some things were just too important.

The first tenet:

I will deny to no one to whom the universe has given it
the right to existence. I will respect all human life, for
even that which only lives in my memory will accuse
me.

Jean Morbern and his Creator had had a special
relationship. She often wondered what it had been
like for him when he realized the godlike responsibilities
he had suddenly acquired over millions of
people, in creating the Home Time; worse, when
he finally accepted he was dying and had to hand
over that responsibility to the College he had
founded. But he had done well; the Code
had lasted 400 hundred years, as had the College
that maintained it.

The fac presented her with her clothes and she
let them settle and seal themselves around her.
She checked her appearance one last time in a
mirrored field as she waited for the taxi to arrive. A
former lover had called her slight: she preferred
slim. Blonde hair in the style she wore for work:
prim, no-nonsense. Dark trousers, yellow and red
tunic, high collar. She liked to be formal for work –
it emphasized that at the end of the day, when she
shucked off the College clothes and put on the
casual ones, she was then in her own time, accountable
only to herself.

A chime told her that the taxi was waiting. She
took one last look at the reflection, then cancelled
the field and went out to the waiting sphere.

'Swishville,' Rico murmured as they stepped into
what was technically an apartment. He and Su
stood on the edge of a small courtyard with a
colonnade running around the edges, and a chuckling
little fountain in the middle. Through the
arches opposite they could see a vast space of empty
air and, beyond that, the stark dark rock and
sparkling white snow of a Himalayan mountain,
shoulder to shoulder with its neighbours in the
range. Rico and Su had to crane their necks to see
the cloud- and snow-shrouded tops. Rico peeked
behind him and saw a similar mountain towering
right over them – the courtyard was carved into it.

This was the Himalayas, 5000 BC. Warmth and
air provided by the Home Time and kept in place
by an invisible forcebubble around the premises;
setting and scenery provided by Nature. Or God. Just
one perk of being a patrician of the Home Time, and
a lot bigger than the little box Rico lived in.

'Out of our league,' Su agreed.

'Oh, come on. You and Tong will end up somewhere
like this in another twenty years.'

'I doubt it.'

'May I help you?' The eidolon of the apartment's
intelligence appeared in front of them, the
standard blue outline showing that it was the projection
of an artificial personality, not a real human.
It was in the form of an old man, bald head, white
beard and robe. Rico wondered who it was meant
to be.

'You're the household?' he said. 'Ops Garron
and Zo. We made an appointment with you to
collect something from Commissioner Daiho.'

'Of course.' The eidolon bowed, and turned into
a glowing ball that hung in mid-air. 'Please follow
the light.'

The light led them over to the valley side of the
courtyard, where a gap in the balustrade led onto a
suspended staircase that curved out into the open
air, then round and down to the level below them.
The apartment was set into the side of a mountain
and the drop below was sheer. Rico savoured
the view, and when his instincts protested at the
amount of solid ground that wasn't beneath his feet
he told himself the apartment would naturally have
agravs to catch him if he fell.

Still, it was a relief to step into what was presumably
the apartment's main chamber. A split-level
sitting room, one side open to the view and the rest
of it carved out of the native rock. There was an
unusual number of people there – more than Rico
had expected Commissioner Daiho to have around.
Being a patrician and a Commissioner of the
College would mean a busy life, but this number of
staff was unexpected.

As his foot touched the floor a voice symbed into
their minds. '
This area is under the jurisdiction of the
Security Division. Please state your business
.'

Security? He and Su looked at each other, then
Rico glanced back at the others already present.
Some were waving instruments here and there,
others seemed to be just lingering and chatting in
small groups. So, these were Security Ops.

'Ops Garron and Zo,' he said. 'You can check
our business here with the household.'

Presumably the voice did just that. '
You may
proceed
.'

'Did the Commissioner leave instructions for
us?' Su asked the ball of light.

'I'm afraid not,' said the house's voice.

'Can we see him, then?' Rico said.

'I'm afraid not,' the light said again. 'The
Commissioner died this morning. He fell from his
balcony.'

Rico and Su glanced at each other, then Rico
edged back to the stairs and peeked into the abyss,
trying to imagine the drop. The whistling of the
wind, the ground looming, the awful knowledge
that in just a few more moments that would be it,
the end, no comeback, body so smashed that no
surgery could repair it.

'Ouch,' he said. Suddenly he felt a lot less secure
in the apartment's agrav safeties and he stepped
back into the security of the room again.

'It was tragic,' the light agreed.

'I think we should go,' Su said.

'Go?' Rico protested. 'But we haven't got what
we came—'

'Rico, I don't think now is a good time for removing
items from the late Commissioner's apartment,
do you?' Su murmured.

Rico glanced around, then back at the light.
'We'll see ourselves out, if that's OK,' he said.

'Of course.' Rico watched as the light moved
away, then turned back to Su.

'Look,' he said, 'the place is crawling with
Ops . . .'

'
Security
Ops,' Su hissed.

'. . . so who's going to notice a couple of extra?'

'Rico, we're
Field
Ops. Completely different
thing.'

Rico grinned and plucked at the tunic of his own
uniform. The cut and colours – yellow, with red
piping – were just the same: Security and Field Ops
all worked for the College. 'If you've got it,' he said,
'use it. Su, the sooner we find what we're after, the
sooner we can leave, right?' He blocked any further
argument by swinging round on his heel and
heading off for where he assumed the study was.