One of the men came over and glared at me. “You can’t stay here,” he told me sternly. “This is a public plaza, not an army barracks.”
“Where do you suggest we go?” I asked, controlling my temper.
“That’s not for me to decide. But-Ah! Here come the police, at last.”
The crowd made a path for a pair of gleaming robots that glided on flight packs a few centimeters above the pavement. Legless, they had six arms, cylindrical torsos, and domed heads that bore sensors and speaker grilles.
“Please identify yourselves,” said the one on my left.
“We are the survivors of the crew of the scout ship Apollo,” I said. “We escaped the battle-”
“One moment, please.” The robot put out one clawed hand in a very human gesture. Then it said, “Records indicate that the Apollo is on a mission to the Jilbert system. Please identify yourselves.”
“We never got to the Jilbert system,” I said, starting to feel odd arguing with a machine. “We got involved in the battle now going on here.”
“There is no battle under way here.”
“In orbit.” I pointed overhead.
The crowd murmured at that. I wondered if any of them would take the trouble to look at the sky after dark, when the exploding spacecraft could be seen as flashes of light among the stars.
If a robot could glare, this one did. “Please come with me.”
“Where?”
“To higher authority.”
Of course, I thought. Where else? Then I pointed to the cryo unit. “This capsule can’t be left here. It should be brought to a hospital or-”
“The object will be taken into custody and brought to a proper facility.”
“We go with it,” I said.
“You will come with us,” the robot replied. “The object will be taken by others to a proper facility.”
I rested my hand on the butt of my pistol. Frede and my crew got slowly to their feet, unlimbering their weapons. The crowd faded back from us.
“We were assigned to guard this capsule,” I lied. “We have carried it across many light-years and fought overwhelming odds to bring it here safely. We will not leave it in a public square for some garbage truck to pick up.”
The robot buzzed to itself for several moments. I noticed that its partner edged off to my right slightly, as if to catch me in a crossfire if any shooting started. Little Jerron, half his tunic torn away and his skin blackened with laser burns, stepped up to it and nudged it with the muzzle of his rifle. It stopped and hovered, buzzing loudly.
“A trained and experienced medical team is on its way to handle the capsule,” the first robot said. “It will be dealt with properly.”
“Good,” I replied. “We’ll wait for them to arrive; then we will go with you.”
Within minutes three aircars glided across the square and landed gently about fifty meters from us. The crowd muttered and chattered as a team of humans climbed out of the cars. One group wore medical whites. The others were in blue, and armed with pistols and stubby rifles.
“I am Captain Perry of the capital police,” said one of the blue uniforms. He was almost my height, stocky, muscular. His curly dark hair flowed to his collar; his face was square, with a pugnacious button of a nose in its middle.
“I am Orion, captain of the Apollo. We’ve brought this cryo capsule from Prime, the Hegemony capital. It bears one of the Hegemony’s top leaders, who has come here to discuss peace terms.”
“While the whole Skorpis fleet is trying to obliterate our defenses?” Perry almost snarled the words.
I fell back on the time-honored refuge of the soldier. “I’m just following my orders, Captain.” It was a lie, but it would work-for the time being.
He tried to stare me down, and when that didn’t work he said, “All right, we’ll take the capsule to our medical facility. But first you’ll have to give up your weapons.”
I shook my head. “We’re soldiers, Captain. We will surrender our weapons to the proper army authorities, no one else.”
“On this planet, the police have the authority to disarm anyone carrying a weapon.”
“Find an army officer to order us, and we’ll disarm,” I said.
Clearly unhappy with us, Perry ordered the medics to attach flight packs to Anya’s capsule and slide it into their car. Then he bundled my crew into the two police cars. Eight of them went with Frede; I led the remaining nine into the car with Perry. It was a tight squeeze for us all, especially with the rifles poking ribs.
As I strapped myself in beside Captain Perry I heard the robot police officers telling the crowd, “Please disperse. You are impeding traffic flow.”
Like good little citizens, they broke up and went their separate ways, buzzing among themselves about this strange event.
All three aircars lifted off the pavement and started down one of the narrow canyons between the glass and metal towers. We climbed above the towers and I could see the city spread out beneath me, a neat geometrical gridwork of straight streets dotted with plazas and green parks.
The white medical car peeled off and headed in a different direction.
“Wait!” I said to Captain Perry. “We’re going with the capsule.”
“No, you’re not,” he said tightly. “The capsule’s going to the med labs, where it will be examined and tested.”
“But-”
“You and your crew are going to an interrogation center. We checked your story. The Apollo was sent to the Jilbert system, more than seven hundred light-years from here. Either you’re lying or you’re a band of traitors. Either way, we’ll get the truth out of you.”
I slid the pistol from my holster and nudged it under his chin.
Perry’s eyes went wide. “Are you crazy?”
“Call it battle fatigue,” I said. “Either we go with the capsule or your brains get splattered on the overhead.”
The other police officers in the car gripped their weapons. So did my crew. The driver was the only one without a gun in his hands; he clung to the control wheel, gulped and stared straight ahead.
“You’ll kill all of us!” Perry snapped.
“That includes you.”
He huffed, then said to the driver, “Follow the medic van.”
We turned and went after the white aircar.
“They’ll hang you by the balls for this, Orion,” Perry said. “And I’ll be there to cheer them on.”
“After the capsule’s properly taken care of,” I told him, “then we can see whose balls get stretched.”
The medical center was a trap.
We landed in the marked pad in the middle of four towering buildings, all three aircars touching down virtually at the same instant. As we climbed out of the cars, four full squads of Tsihn soldiery stepped out of the doors on all four sides of us, guns leveled.
“Lizards!” I heard Frede growl.
“You will drop your weapons, humans,” said the Tsihn leader, a huge ocher-colored reptilian whose chest and arms were covered with insignia and decorations.
For a long silent moment we stood there confronting each other.
“I am Colonel Hrass-shleessa,” the big reptilian said. “I am duly authorized to command you. Put your weapons on the ground or we will fire.”
I glanced sideways at Captain Perry. He did not relish the idea of being caught in a firefight between us and the Tsihn.
We were hopelessly outnumbered. “They’ll kill us all,” Jerron grumbled. “Damned lizards.”
“Put your guns down,” I commanded my crew. “We will obey the colonel’s order.” I had no choice but to be an obedient soldier.
They marched us into another aircar while a medical team guided Anya’s capsule, floating on its flight packs, into one of the buildings. This aircar was army brown, and built more like a truck. We were bundled into the back, seated on the two benches running along its sides. I caught a glimpse of Captain Perry standing next to his own aircar as they slammed the hatch shut in my face. He was grinning at me, a malicious grin of triumph.
We flew out of the city, into the mountains to its west, for more than an hour. With nothing else to do, most of my crew flaked out and drowsed. I sat on the hard bucket seat and thought of the crew members who weren’t with us anymore: bloodied Emon, Dyer with her legs blown away, so many others. Don’t make friends, I told myself. A combat soldier shouldn’t make any personal attachments.
We were flown to an army detention center out in the cold, gray mountains. Human prisoners and Tsihn guards. I bristled at the reptilians; every instinct in me told me they were the enemies of humankind. And here in this detention center that certainly seemed so.
They separated me from Frede and the rest of the crew, showed me to a bare little windowless cell. Nothing but a cot, sink and toilet. And a lightbulb set into the concrete ceiling, too high for me to reach.
I was not in the cell for long, however. A pair of Tsihn guards unlocked my door and escorted me to a room where a junior Tsihn officer-its scales were pale lemon and bore hardly any decorations at all-sat on a high stool that was the only piece of furniture visible.
“You will sit,” it said to me.
I lowered myself to the concrete floor. It felt cold, clammy. My two guards remained standing by the door.
Satisfied that he could loom over me, the Tsihn officer leaned toward me and asked, “Who are you and where are you from?”
“My name is Orion. I was captain of the Apollo.”
It bared its teeth. “The Apollo was sent to the Jilbert system.”
“We never got there. We went to Prime, instead, and brought one of the Hegemony’s topmost leaders here to discuss peace terms with the Commonwealth’s leadership.”
It snorted. I could see the humid air huffing from its nostrils. “Orion, you say your name is?”
“Yes.”
“There is no record of you in the Commonwealth military files.”
That surprised me only slightly. “Check with Brigadier Uxley at sector station six,” I said. “He knows me. Check with my crew; we’ve done a lot of fighting together. Lunga, Bititu, the battle going on now in orbit.”
“That battle is finished,” it said grandly. “The Skorpis fleet has been driven off.”
“Good.”
Those red slitted eyes stared at me. “You see, to me all you humans look alike. How can we tell if you are truly a Commonwealth soldier or a Hegemony spy? The same applies to your crew, as well.”
I realized that my true story would sound ludicrously fraudulent to it. “You have brainwave scanners, don’t you? You can easily see if I’m telling the truth.”
“Ah, the truth,” breathed my reptilian interrogator, almost like a human professor of philosophy. “What is the truth, Orion? You could tell me a tale that you believe to be true, and yet it might simply be a set of memories implanted in your mind by Hegemony intelligence operatives.”
I shrugged. “Then what’s the point of this questioning?”
It cocked its lizard’s head to one side. “Why, to hear what you have to say. To determine if there is any valuable information in your story. That’s the least we can do before we execute you and your crew.”
Chapter 31
So I told my Tsihn interrogator my whole story, even the truth about Aten and the other Creators. It listened with great interest, I thought, although it was impossible to read any expression on its reptilian face. But it was polite and even seemed curious, interrupting me with questions time and again.
All through my long narration, though, a part of my mind kept repeating to me that they were going to kill me. Kill Frede and Jerron and the rest of my crew. Why? Why execute loyal soldiers who had fought so hard for them?
It was my fault. I had disobeyed orders and taken them to Prime. As far as the Commonwealth was concerned, I was a traitor, and very likely a spy from the Hegemony. My crew was going to die because of me.
But then I began to think of the other factors. Somewhere in this mess was Aten, the Golden One, trying to manipulate the humans, their allies, their enemies, even the other Creators. He would kill Anya now that he had her in his possession. And I had delivered her to him.
“He’ll kill you, too,” I told my interrogator.
The young Tsihn blinked its yellow eyes. “What do you mean by that?”
“Aten doesn’t want his creatures to know that he is manipulating them. He doesn’t want the Commonwealth to know that this war is being fought because of an argument among the Creators.”
The Tsihn officer was silent for a long moment. Then it said, “Either you are a very creative liar, Orion, or an absolute psychotic. Your invention of the Creators has some aspect of poetry to it, I must admit, but you carry it too far.”
“He’ll kill you to keep my story from leaking out,” I said.
“I am not one of his creatures-if he exists at all.”
“How many Tsihn have died in this war? How many more will be killed?”
“That’s enough, Orion,” said the reptilian. “This session is finished.”
I climbed to my feet, legs tingling from sitting so long. “Your life is now in danger,” I told it. Jerking a thumb toward the guards at the door, I added, “Theirs, too.”
The Tsihn remained on his stool, barely eye level with me. “Nonsense,” it scoffed.
“Is it? I presume this session has been recorded, even though I don’t see any equipment.”
Its eyes darted to a corner of the ceiling.
“Play back the recording. See if it’s intact. I’ll bet it’s already been erased.”
“Nonsense,” it said again. But it sounded just a bit weaker to me. It ordered the guards to take me back to my cell. They said not a word to me.
As the cell door slammed behind me, I knew there was only one person who could save my crew from execution. I threw myself on the bare thongs of the cot and squeezed my eyes shut in concentration. Aten was nearby; I could feel his presence, almost smell him.
But he refused to make contact with me. As I tried, I sensed a blank wall, like an energy screen he had built around himself to keep me away from him.
Very well, then. I went elsewhere. I gathered my strength and my knowledge and tried to contact the Old Ones. I called across the light-years for their aid, their wisdom.
Stop the war, Orion, they told me.
“How? What can I do? I can’t even protect my own crew; we’re all going to be executed.”
Find the strength, they said.
“Help me,” I pleaded. “If you want this war to be stopped, then help me.”
A vague sigh of disappointment. It is your problem, Orion, not ours. The problem of the human race. We will not make ourselves your guardians, your conscience, your protectors. You must do it for yourselves.
“You would exterminate us,” I countered.
Only if you become a threat to stars themselves. We have no right to interfere unless you begin to threaten the life of the entire galaxy with your violence.
And they showed me why they were concerned. I saw whole stars exploding, one after another. In a closely packed star cluster, a chain reaction began, dozens of stars erupting into shattering cataclysm, the shock waves from each explosion triggering dozens more, hundreds more. I saw whole galaxies torn apart by titanic explosions at their cores that engulfed millions of stars, tens of millions of planets, countless living creatures. Whole civilizations, intelligent species that had struggled for millennia to reach out among the stars, wiped out in smothering waves of explosions that ripped across megaparsecs, destroying everything in their path, reducing flesh and mind and hope to wildly contorted clouds of ionized gas.
This has been done in other galaxies by intelligences very much like your own, the Old Ones told me. This we cannot permit here. We have no desire to be your guardian angels, Orion, but we will be your angels of death if you try to destroy the stars.
I opened my eyes and found myself still in my cell, alone, abandoned by the Old Ones, shunned by the Creators, without even a rat to keep me company. Somewhere the Tsihn were interrogating Frede and the others, I knew. Somewhere an execution squad was waiting for us. I wondered if Captain Perry would be invited to watch.
Anya. I reached out for her, to the cryonic capsule where she slept, still frozen, barely alive, her mind pulsing so slowly as the last dregs of her strength ebbed away that I could not feel even a flicker of her presence. I sensed a team of technicians probing her capsule, trying to decide whether they should attempt to revive her or just shut down the cryonic systems and let her die.
“Somebody’s gone to a lot of trouble for nothing,” one of the techs said. “This capsule’s empty.”
Empty!
“How could it be empty?” asked the tech’s supervisor. “Those soldiers brought it all the way from Prime, they said.”
“Take a look. X rays, magnetic resonance, neutrino scan-there’s nobody inside this capsule. It’s empty.”
With a bellow of rage there in my cell I realized that the Golden One had outwitted me once again. He had removed Anya’s dying body from the capsule. He had her in his possession. Perhaps she was already dead.
I leaped to my feet and roared like a jungle animal. I howled and threw myself at the heavy door of my cell. Its reinforced steel barely quivered at my pounding. I slid to the concrete floor and leaned my head against the door. Everything we had done, all the blood and killing, all the dead and wounded we had suffered-all for nothing. Aten had Anya in his grasp and we were going to be executed and there was no one in the whole continuum who would help me.
Use your brain, friend Orion, I heard the Old Ones whisper. Your strength does not avail you now. You must use your intelligence.
Wonderful advice. Locked in a prison cell, lost and abandoned. I butted my head softly against the door. How could I get out of here? And what should I do, if I could get out?
I could translate myself to another point in space-time, travel across the continuum to another era, light-years away from here. But what good would that do? I had to save my crew. I had to stop the war. I had to rescue Anya, if she still lived.
I closed my eyes. Somewhere in the galaxy, I realized, there is a matter transceiver that the Creators use for their travels across space-time. It must be enormously powerful, compared to the transceivers we are using in this era. Powered by a star, I guessed, or perhaps even a whole cluster of stars. It extends into the continuum, flickers across space-time so that the Creators can tap into its energies and translate themselves whenever and wherever they are. I myself have used that transceiver without even realizing that it existed. The Creators’ mystical tricks are nothing more than very advanced technology, after all.
And what they can do, I told myself, I can do.
Is that so? a sneering voice in my mind challenged. The echo of Aten’s arrogant disdain.
I pushed myself to my feet, there in my cell. “Yes, it is so,” I said aloud, hoping that Aten could hear me, wanting him to see what I was about to do.
I felt the stupendous energy of that immense transceiver pulsating across the waves of space-time, rippling through the continuum like a steady, strong heartbeat. I tapped into that energy, not blindly as I had before, but purposefully, knowingly.
I reached into the cells in this prison where the rest of my crew were being held. I searched across the capital city, across the entire planet of Loris, and found all the members of the Commonwealth’s High Council. I extended my awareness across light-years to Prime and located all the members of the Hegemony’s Central Command.
I brought them all together, at the place and time of my choosing: the primeval forest of Paradise on Earth, at the end of the last Ice Age.
As I translated my crew there I decked them in dress uniforms of blue and gold and gave each of them a sidearm in a white leather holster. The politicians of the Commonwealth and Hegemony came as they were, some in street clothes, some in sleepwear, one in swimming trunks, another in nothing but a bath towel. Not all of them were human, of course. Tsihn reptilians joined my meeting, as did Skorpis generals and several other alien species, including a clutch of Arachnoids.
I arranged a clearing in the forest with a long conference table in its middle. The politicians I placed in chairs along the table, Commonwealth on one side, Hegemony on the other. I set up a ten-meter-high web at the foot of the table for the Arachnoids to cling to. I put scratchpads on the table for the Skorpis and water sprayers for the one amphibian species.
There was a considerable uproar, of course. Humans and aliens alike yelled, screeched, thundered a thousand questions at one another. They ignored me as I stood at the head of the table in a uniform of blood red, my arms folded across my chest. My own crew seemed just as startled and confused as the rest.
I let the politicians babble and called Frede to my side.
“What is this?” she asked, breathless, her eyes wide with stunned surprise. “How did you-”
“I’ll explain later,” I said. “Right now I want you and the rest of the crew to serve as a guard of honor. And to make sure that none of these politicians leave the table.”
Frede blinked twice, a thousand questions in her eyes. But she turned without another word and set up the crew at parade rest evenly spaced around the table, their backs to the trees and flowering foliage of Paradise.
The politicians were still jabbering and bickering among themselves, hurling accusations across the table.
I took the pistol from my red leather holster and fired a sizzling laser beam down the length of the table, burning a hole in its end just short of the Arachnoid web. They all jerked back, shocked into silence.
I smiled at them and put the pistol away as I said, “You’re probably wondering why I asked you here this morning.”
“Who are you?”
“Where are we?”
I held up my hands to silence them before any more questions could be asked.
“We are on Earth, at a time approximately twelve and a half millennia earlier than your own era.”
“Nonsense!”
“A patent lie, no one can travel across time. Our scientists have tried it and-”
“Shut up!” I snapped in my best military voice of command.