Time's Chariot (9 page)

'No. I'd know if it was.' Hoon raised a sceptic
eyebrow. 'I would,' Marje insisted. 'You have to
know your own mind if you're going to study other
people's.'

'Good point.'

'So what in our history would you like to see?'
Marje said.

Hoon looked thoughtful. 'Where to start?' she
said. 'Let's see. I'd like to visit the Neanderthals and
learn about their civilization. I'd like to watch the
first humans arrive in North America. I'd like to
talk to Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and clear
up a couple of points. I'd like to witness the building
of Stonehenge and the Nazca Lines, find out
what they're for—'

'We know all that. I've seen the correspondents'
reports.'

'I know, I know.' Hoon gave a wry smile. 'And
you don't want the past overrun with romantics like
me. But that's what I'd like. And maybe—'

'Maybe?'

'No.' Hoon shook her head. 'You wouldn't
approve.'

'No, go on,' Marje said, intrigued. 'Please.'

'Marje, there is such potential in the Home Time
and we don't use it. Instead we let the space nations
crowd us in on Earth when there's room for us all
out there. Why not send ships back hundreds,
thousands of years? Colonize space before the
space nations get there?'

Marje knew how rude it would be to express her
immediate reaction and so she kept quiet, and
Hoon carried on regardless. 'And maybe . . .
correct a few things. This and that. It wouldn't
affect us here, would it? This is the Home Time. All
the streams lead here. But if you could prevent
all the wars, all the plagues, all the famines of
history, think how many lives you would be
saving.'

Marje sighed. This woman was on the Oversight
Committee: she was one of the people responsible
for keeping College and World Executive in touch.
'And all the people who lived instead never would,'
she said. 'We don't play God, Ekat. Have you heard
of Jean Morbern?'

'Of course I have.'

'He left us with a set of ethics—' said Marje.

'And an artificial intelligence that makes damn
sure you keep to them. AIs can be overridden,
Marje. Do you want a fancified computer telling
you what to do?'

'If I disagreed with it, no, I wouldn't. But the
Register isn't a fancified computer and I agree with
every detail of Morbern's Code.' Marje heard her
voice growing cold but made no effort to change it.
'It's not just that all College personnel are sworn to
follow it. You have to realize, Jean Morbern was horrified
when he realized what . . . what godlike
things he had done. Creating the timestreams
meant creating millions, billions more people, all
individuals, all with rights. He didn't mean to
create the streams – they just . . . happened when
he made his first visits upstream, before he'd got
the hang of probability shielding. He felt he had no
right to create them and therefore no right to
uncreate either.'

'And you're with him, Marje?' Hoon said quietly.

'I'm afraid I am,' Marje said. 'I'm surprised
Hossein didn't tell you all this before,' she added.

Hoon paused, then smiled and bowed. 'I was out
of order and I apologize. Can we start again?'

If Hoon was offering an olive branch, that was
fine by Marje. 'Let's do that,' she said with a smile.

'Ah, here comes Hossein . . .'

Marje turned to look, and winced at a sudden
crash. All heads turned in that direction. Asaldra
had been worming his way towards them with a tray
in one hand. Someone had stepped backwards at
the wrong moment and the tray had gone flying.
The man who had bumped into the tray staggered,
arms flailing about. His foot came down on one of
the fallen glasses and it broke into several
fragments.

'Don't touch it!' the man shouted, panicked. He
stared down at the fragments and from the way his
eyes were fixed on the broken glass, Marje knew
that his symb was pumping in screaming, lurid
images of blood in front of his eyes whenever he
thought of picking it up. Antipathy to sharp edges
was something that everyone had in their preparation,
but lower classifications like this man had it
more than most. 'I–I'll call a drone . . .' he said.

'Oh, please,' said Asaldra. He knelt down and
carefully picked up the fragments, placing them in
his cupped left hand. The man recoiled as he
straightened up. Asaldra looked over at the two
women, shrugged and pulled a face, and turned to
go back to the bar with his unwelcome cargo. The
crowd parted in front of him.

Conversation gradually picked up once more,
now that the crisis was over and the unpleasant
reality of sharp edges that could hurt someone had
been removed.

'Social preparation,' said Hoon dryly. 'Where
would we be without it?'

Marje took a breath. 'It enables twenty billion
human beings to live together without harming
each other, and to me that justifies a lot.' She
wondered who had had the bright idea of using
real glass in the glasses. It was taking the love of
anachronism too far.

'Even to the point of not being able to stand the
thought of broken glass? Come on, Marje! Our race
evolved using sharp edges. Why do we force-feed
our children from birth onwards with the idea that
that sharp edges are bad?'

'What's your point?'

'My point is that any other society in history
would have called social preparation brainwashing,
a tool to keep the people down. Can you imagine
the Directorate with social preparation?'

This was going too far. Comparing the Home
Time to the twenty-second century's most unpleasant
regime was too much.

'But we're not the Directorate,' Marje said with a
brittle smile.

'No, but we might very well become that, when
the Home Time ends in twenty-seven years time
and the World Executive realizes it has twenty
billion people to keep happy and nothing to do it
with. Oh, we'll keep cruising on momentum for a
century or so, living off the memories which the
College gave us . . .'

'Social Studies is working on that,' Marje said.
'The end of the Home Time won't take anyone by
surprise, Ekat.'

'It certainly won't,' Hoon agreed. 'You can
depend on that.'

'Rico?' Su paused on the edge of the ravine, judged
that Rico wasn't down there, and looked around.
'Where are you?'

'Over here,' Rico said faintly. He had dragged
himself to a tree and was sitting on the ground with
his back to it. He had tried to use the symb channel
to get help but it had shut down. Presumably it had
been open just long enough to entice him.

Su gasped. The massive bruise on one side of his
face was clear in the moonlight.

'What happened to you?'

'Walked into a door.' He held up a hand. 'Help
me up, Su.'

'There aren't any doors here.'

'I didn't think so either, but it's –' Rico hissed in
pain as he slowly rose to the vertical, Su taking his
weight on one side and the crutch on the other –
'amazing what you find if you look hard enough.'

'Rico, you went off for drinks, and that was the
last we saw of you, and now . . .'

'I'll be OK after half an hour in a healer,' Rico
said. 'Just help me get to the recall area.' Slowly,
they began to hobble off, and Rico shut his ears to
Su's protests while his mind worked over what he
had been through.

Yes, it made sense. Low classification: might be
able to do it, but social preparation would prevent
it. High classification: less social preparation, but
no idea how to do it.

But high classification, and control over a group
of very strong 'tals with no social preparation at all:
all of a sudden, all sorts of things were possible.
And the only high classifications like that . . .

. . . worked for the College.

'By the way,' he said through his teeth, interrupting
whatever Su had been saying, 'my theory
makes sense now.'

'What theory?' Su demanded angrily.

'The one I tested at Daiho's place, remember? I
worked out that if a body was thrown far enough
then the agravs wouldn't pick it up. But I couldn't
work out how the body could be thrown that far.'

'And?'

'I've just realized what could have done it.' He
gasped as his injured leg banged into a rock. 'Still
don't know who, though. They tried to put me off,
Su.'

'And did they?' Su said, though there was no
hope in her tone.

'In your dreams.'

They were through the trees, now. Tong came
towards them, stopped, gaped, then hurried forward
to lend his assistance, cautioned only with a
stern 'don't ask' from his wife.

They tried to skirt the crowd to get to the terrace
where the recall area was, but at least one member
of the crowd saw them and came forward. Rico's
heart sank as the familiar and very unwanted toad-like
figure of Supervisor Marlici approached,
silhouetted against the lights.

'Op Garron!' he said, with a smile like a shark
greeting someone else's long-lost relative. 'How
glad I am I found you.'

Matthew Carradine, the founder, Managing
Director and President of BioCarr, had
started pacing around his office for the third time.

The office was a beautifully decorated room in the
magnificent seventeenth-century mansion that he
had bought when he inherited his parents' fortune,
at the end of the first decade of the millennium. It
had a breathtaking view of the park outside. It was
decorated with exquisite taste, product of the best
interior designers his considerable money could buy.
The perfect base from which to put all that money to
even better use and build up a fortune of his own.

As he had done. He loved this building, but
today it just bored him.

His PA, a quiet and inoffensive man called Alan,
was turning into an irritating nag and had been
snapped at the last time he put his head around the
door to offer some tea. And when a call had finally
come through two minutes ago, it hadn't been
the
call – it had been Alan again, with a mundane,
routine matter that couldn't wait. The poor man
had barely escaped with his life.

'Where are they?' Carradine muttered. 'Where
are
they?'

It was the moment he had been waiting for ever
since the visitor, the stranger, had appeared and
stood in front of him – just
there
, between the table
and the drinks cabinet – and outlined his plans.
And then he had put down what he called 'a
deposit'. And what a deposit! Information decades,
maybe centuries ahead of what BioCarr – or, more
importantly, BioCarr's rivals – could offer. No doubt
it was passé in – what had he called it? – the Home
Time, which lay who knew how far in the future;
but here and now in good old 2022, the stuff was so
hot it was molten.

A day later, once the information had been
verified and Carradine was still coming to terms
with the reality of the gold seam he had struck, the
man had come back and made the deal. All this in
return for certain facilities and a bit of privacy.

Carradine stopped pacing and glanced at his
watch. It was 16:07, and the arranged time had
been 16.00. Had something gone wrong? Had the
Home Timers changed their mind? Had they all
been taken – he swallowed, it was a distinct possibility
– for a ride?

The call tone sounded and he threw himself at
his desk. Then he checked himself and carefully sat
down, ran his hands back through his hair and
pulled the display towards him. Alan looked out at
him, any resentment from his previous tongue-lashing
well hidden. Alan was like that. Quiet,
reserved, unbelievably discreet, almost ageless.
Carradine had suspicions about the reasons for his
singleness which he kept to himself.

This once, Alan was indulging in a small smile.

'I've got Holliss at the hotel for you, Matthew,'
he said. 'They've arrived.'

'Thank God! I mean, good. Good.' Carradine
had to keep his arms flat on the desk in front of
him, rather than hug himself with glee, which
was his instinct. It was working. It could work. 'Put
her through.'

Edith Holliss looked out at him, large glasses taking
up most of the image. They irritated him, as
they always did. Why did an employee of BioCarr,
which stood for progress and technology, insist on
such anachronisms when perfectly good vision
correction was available to all for a small fee?

'Mr Carradine,' she gushed, 'I'm delighted to
say . . .'

'Show me,' Carradine said. Holliss let a brief
flash of irritation show around the edges of
her polished smile but she nodded slightly and her
picture moved to the left of the display. A group
shot appeared on the other side. Four people, and
a pile of boxes stacked behind them. 'It was quite
eerie, sir,' she said. 'We were expecting them and
we'd kept the area clear, as instructed, but even so,
they just . . . appeared. No noise, no flash, no
special effects – it just seemed so natural that
suddenly they were there.'

Carradine remembered his own dealings with
the Home Timer. There hadn't even been any air
displacement, which would surely be expected if a
substantial body were to appear and disappear at
will. 'I know.' He zoomed in on the picture. A
young woman and three men covering a range of
ages. None of them was the man he had dealt with.
He peered more closely, with interest. Their clothes
were strange – nothing to distinguish gender, and
impossible to tell if they were wearing separate tops
and bottoms or strangely designed one-pieces,
though there was plenty of variation within that
theme – but otherwise they could be the people next
door. 'Any indication of how long they plan to stay?'

'None at all, sir. The booking's open-ended, as
instructed.'

'Well, their rent's good for it,' Carradine said.

Holliss looked puzzled. 'Well, of course, sir,
BioCarr is footing the bill . . .'

'That wasn't what I meant,' Carradine snapped,
thinking that though Holliss was technically a
Grade 7 BioCarr employee, at heart she would
always be a hotel manager. A very good hotel
manager, whose establishment was frequented by
senior BioCarr officials and therefore had the best
staff and the tightest security BioCarr could buy . . .
but still a hotel manager.

She looked offended and he was immediately
angry with himself. She couldn't be expected to
know about the information the go-between had
offered. 'Please tell me the surveillance is in place?'
he said.

Holliss hadn't been well pleased to have bugs
planted all over her establishment and she dared to
look slightly put out. 'It is, sir, only they have some
device which we haven't been able to locate, and it
jams our local bugs.'

'Naturally,' Carradine said. 'What are you doing
about it?'

'The surveillance people,' Holliss said, emphasizing
that it wasn't her problem, 'say they're going
to have to make do with lasers on the windows, lip
reading via telescope, that sort of thing. What
you've just seen was the last good shot we had of the
guests before the cameras were affected.'

'Very interesting. What did they bring with
them?'

'A lot of boxes, sir. I can't tell what they're made
of, and it's difficult to say what's in them. As for
personal luggage – nothing but the clothes they're
wearing.'

'Give them whatever they want.'

'Of course, sir.'

'And now, introduce us.'

The image of two youngsters – Carradine would
have said sixteen or so, maybe older but certainly
not by much – filled the display. The boy's skin and
features looked vaguely Hispanic with sallow skin
and dark hair. The girl too was basically white but
otherwise impossible to classify straight off.
Carradine had no idea what racial intermixings
might be the norm in the Home Time.

Holliss was going from left to right. 'These two
seem to be dogsbodies, sir. The boy is . . . it's
difficult to say since of course they haven't filled in
registration cards or anything. As far as I can tell his
name is something like Bayzhay. The girl is something
like Killin. They don't seem to speak our
language at all.'

The display changed to one of the other men,
bearded and in his late thirties or early forties. 'This
one appears to be in charge, sir. His name is
Phenuel Scott. The two young ones jump when he
says.

'And last of all, this one.' The image was of an
oriental man of indefinable age. His hair was greying
but his face wasn't particularly wrinkled, yet he
looked old. Perhaps it was his expression, or his
eyes, or both. 'He speaks our language but doesn't
say much. I said Scott was in charge but it seems to
be because this one lets him be. Scott treats him
with honour and respect – that is, his tone changes
when they talk together.'

'I see,' Carradine said. 'Name?'

'Again, difficult to tell, sir. It sounds Chinese or
Japanese . . .'

'There is a difference, Ms Holliss, as any Chinese
or Japanese will tell you.'

Holliss flushed. 'Yes, sir. His name sounds like
Daiho. Scott called him "the Commissioner", but I
don't know what he's a Commissioner of.'