Echoes In Time Part 11

Eveleen's eyes were sad. "Exactly."

Ross shuddered. "h.e.l.l. Hadn't thought of that, but even if it's been centuries-h.e.l.l." It seemed inadequate, but at the same time appropriate. No one wanted to think their descendants-or their friends' descendants-would be savage monsters. "Let's hope not."

Elizaveta worked at the generator, making sure the bio-ma.s.s converters were functioning smoothly. Ross sniffed; a faint whiff of alcohol seemed to tickle his nose, but maybe that was his imagination. He knew in general how the converters worked-converting organic matter into alcohol, which then burned pure, to power the generator.

As he watched, Elizaveta adjusted something, and that faint whiff was gone, buried in the astonishing variety of scents carried on the heavy air.

"Well, we'll start finding out tomorrow," Eveleen whispered, staring through the open door of the hut, where Gregori worked with steady care on the time-transfer apparatus.

"Maybe we'd better head back and start preparing," Ross said.

He looked up. It seemed the others had had the same idea.

In silence they returned to the ship, a good meal, and a night's sleep.

EARLY THE NEXT morning, when it was Ross's turn to step into the strange sonic shower, he shut his eyes and let the frothy bubbles work deeply into his skin. Who knew how long it would be until he stood here again? At the back of his mind a voice whispered, "If you come back-" but that only succeeded in making him angry, and he closed off the shower controls and got into his transfer clothing. you come back-" but that only succeeded in making him angry, and he closed off the shower controls and got into his transfer clothing.

Eveleen was waiting in the galley, along with the rest of the team. He went to her side. Next to her was his pack of equipment.

The others chattered quietly; when Zina appeared in the hatchway and looked around, they all fell silent.

"The time-transfer apparatus is set up, and runs successfully, Gregori reports," she said. "I suggest we waste no further time."

The others responded with gestures or murmurs of agreement.

Zina added, "I wish that I could be with you on this mission. But my place is here, in the present. And I know that Professor Ashe will carry out command as I would have done." She nodded at Gordon.

The sudden formality underscored the tension in them all-all except, perhaps, Misha. He only grinned. Ross wondered if that mention of command was a reminder to the Russian time agents, Misha especially.

Misha's grin widened slightly, but all he said was, "Let us go. We want to be there at dawn, do we not?"

As they stepped down the ramp into the soft predawn air, Renfry and Boris appeared behind them. "Good luck," Renfry called in a low voice. "See you soon."

Boris added something in Russian, and Vera turned and gave him a cheery wave. Both Boris and Renry stood on the ramp; their job right now was to guard the ship.

There was little talk as the rest of the team marched through the dark forest to the campsite. The faint light of dawn painted the wild growth around them with splendorous color; the sun was just rising.

When they reached the campsite, Elizaveta, Gregori, and Valentin were waiting.

Zina turned to face the time agents. "I have said what is needful." Her eyes were steady in the pale light. "We will await your signal. Good hunting."

The rest of the science team stepped forward to say quick, subdued good-byes, and then Gordon and Saba walked into the hut.

Moments later the ground seemed to shake slightly: an illusion, Ross knew, a response of the mind to the distorted probability waves sweeping out from the apparatus as it catapulted the two agents into the distant past. Other than the slightly acrid scent of ozone, there was no other indication of the time machine's operation.

Misha and Viktor went next.

Then it was his and Eveleen's turn.

She said nothing, only picked up her pack. Ross did as well. They stepped inside the hut. There were the bars, the familiar but weird opaque material for them to step on. He looked down at his feet, thinking about the many jaunts to the past he'd made. Last time, on Dominium, he and Eveleen had come back as heroes. He hoped this time would be as successful but less traumatic.

The platform suddenly seemed to drop out from under him as a million voices shouted inside his head. White light filled him, squeezing out his ident.i.ty for a moment that seemed endless...

Then reality collapsed back around him, a coc.o.o.n of certainty, and he opened his eyes. Next to him, Eveleen's breathing was harsh but controlled. She looked at him, her own eyes dark, her lips pressed together.

"We're here," he murmured, and leaned down to kiss her.

For a moment their lips met. Hers were dry, but warm and sweet.

"One more. For the road."

"For the century," she retorted, and gave him a smacking kiss. Then she said, "They're waiting for us." And she opened the swinging metal door of the shed.

They stepped out.

The grotto was surprisingly like the one in the present, but the smells were different. Ross sniffed, finding the air cleaner somehow. He kept sniffing as they rounded a huge shrub, to find Misha and Viktor gazing silently upward, one face puzzled, the other grim.

The Russians turned to face the new arrivals.

"The First Team had reported no flyers," Misha said without preamble, his gray eyes sardonic.

Why state the obvious? Eveleen looked aside, rolling her eyes. They'd known that since the first briefing.

"Right." Ross decided to humor him. "So your job is to search for them as well as for remains. So?"

"So look, American." He raised his hand skyward.

They were looking east at the rising sun. Against the reddish ball, a flight of huge winged shapes flapped with grace- humanoid shapes.

Flyers.

CHAPTER 12.

ROSS SAID, "WHERE'S Gordon? Saba?"

Misha pointed up the hill, which was considerably higher than the one up the timeline. Eveleen couldn't see either time agent, but then she knew she wouldn't. They'd be scanning the area under as much cover as possible.

She turned her eyes eastward, and watched the flyers disappear on the horizon. No one spoke. No one moved until the soundless shock repeated, and Vera and Irina stepped out of the shed containing the time machine. Eveleen's mind shied away reflexively from the knowledge of how fragile their link to their own time was: the shed and the machinery it contained were but projections of the apparatus in their own time.

Gordon and Saba appeared a moment later, walking quickly down the steep hillock.

"The perimeter of the port seems to be roughly the same as up the timeline," Gordon said quickly. "And completely quiet. Nothing in sight except robotic maintenance devices of various sorts, either shutdown or quiescent. As for this area, our guess was right. It's a kind of park. There's nothing but vegetation in view. But I can see buildings over that way." He pointed to the southeast.

"No s.p.a.ceships at the port?" Ross asked.

"Not that I can see," Gordon replied, hefting his field scanners. He turned to Viktor. "And the landing area is full of cracks and brush-indicating nothing has either come down or taken off for many years. So let's get the second phase of this mission complete."

Viktor gave a quick nod. "We are ready. We return as quick as possible."

He and Misha vanished into the undergrowth.

Eveleen exchanged a glance with Ross. He looked grim, and she didn't blame him. Misha and Viktor's first order had been to check the burial site of the Russian biologist to make sure the bones were still there. They would not disturb the body in any way, merely make certain it was just as it would be found up the timeline in the present-to double-check that time had not been altered at this end of the timeline.

Already they had one anomaly: the flying creatures.

As if his mind had been following the same track, Gordon said, "There might be landing sites elsewhere, on another island. We're hampered by our use of the globe ships and the autopilot wire in that we can't go on a scouting trip around the planet."

"That would explain the flying people," Saba murmured. "We know we'll be finding other species who have already a.s.similated. It could be that the flyers landed and figured out how to a.s.similate some time during the century since the First Team appeared here."

Eveleen nodded her agreement. "In a hundred years, it's certainly not unreasonable."

Vera frowned. "This could include other humanoids."

Eveleen thought immediately of the feral human creatures in the present timeline-their tentacled bodies and utter lack of any form of civilization. If the Russians had disappeared, how could those feral humans be their descendants?

It would mean that either other human-type beings had appeared-or that she and her team would be trapped in this time and place, and those were their descendants. Not the Russians, but hers. Ross's. Gordon's and Misha's and Vera's and the others'.

She turned to Ross, biting her lip. If... if it were true, could she bear to have children?

Don't think about it now, she told herself. Keep your mind on the mission.

"Viktor will be fast," Irina said softly. "He and Mikhail Petrovich have been to the burial site twice since we landed, in the present timeline. They will know where to go."

Mikhail Petrovich. Irina never called Misha by his nickname.

Eveleen pursed her lips. When did the men sleep? She had to admit that Misha, despite his att.i.tudes, was a dedicated agent.

Either dedicated, she temporized-or driven.

"Let's grab some eats, shall we?" Ross suggested. "The tough stuff will be starting soon enough-why start it on an empty stomach?"

Vera grinned, and she and Irina cautiously began exploring in the immediate vicint.i.ty. Eveleen watched them go. Their job would be food traders, and as such they had mastered all the details about food experiments recorded by the First Team.

Just as the air was breathable, so was most of the food edible. Within a short time the two women returned laden with fruits and some large nutty gourds that turned out to be delicious. Irina had done a scan on a stream just meters away, and the water had nothing dangerous in it, so they each took a turn drinking after the meal.

They'd just finished when Viktor and Misha returned, appearing silently, without disturbing any of the undergrowth. Eveleen privately awarded them points for superior woodcraft.

"He's there," Misha said, his mouth tight at the corners. "We found the body, buried at the Field-of-Vagabonds. It's been left just as the First Team described."

"Then we will a.s.sume the timeline is intact," Gordon replied. "All right, ground rules again. Emergency pulses only, at least until we've had a chance to settle in and know that we're not being overheard. Relay everything through me."

He paused, his blue eyes narrowed. Everyone a.s.sented.

Gordon lifted a hand. "Then let's go."

Viktor took over, leading them down a pathway. They all knew, in general, the layout of the Yilayil city as described by the First Team. Viktor had memorized every bit of data available-and he would be mapping the areas that the First Team had not reported on, as he and Misha made their methodical search for forensic evidence of the other First Team members.

"The only thing that gives me hope," Ross murmured to Eveleen as they marched single file through the thick jungle undergrowth, "is that the abrupt disappearance of the First Team might just mean that we did rescue them."

Eveleen said, "Except why don't we find anything left by our future selves, to tell us how to do it? I know I'd do that for myself, if I could. There are no signs of any of us-that we've found."

"Not up the timeline, but there might be here. Right?" Ross asked.

"But if there is, we'd have to have left it from the past, not here-because we just got here. And the apparatus doesn't permit microjumps, so we can a.s.sume we don't slap back to this day and hide out to leave us little notes to wherever we're going now."

"Unh," Ross grunted, shaking his head. "This time stuff really makes my brain ache."

On the other side of Ross, Saba was smiling. "It's almost easier to discuss in Yilayil. I need to untangle those odd tense constructions."

"Doesn't matter," Ashe said tersely. "From now on, if you speak, speak Yilayil," he ordered. And he added a quick comment in that language that Eveleen translated to herself; leaving out the identifiers and the false origin they'd developed from the First Team's personae, it meant: We are on their ground, we do as they do We are on their ground, we do as they do.

No further reminder of the fate of the Russian biologist needed to be made.

Eveleen toiled along, her knapsack on her back. The humid air made her feel damp and hot before long, and the scents of the millions of herbs and blossoms around them were overpowering. She knew they'd eventually be coming to a cleared area; maybe her sinuses would unclog.

As she walked, she heard Saba half suppress a sneeze, followed almost immediately by Irina. Viktor and Gordon began breathing through their mouths. But no one spoke again as they kept walking.

Once they stopped. Viktor lifted a hand, then dashed down the trail aways, followed by Misha. Eveleen watched them move silently and swiftly. She thought she heard a low thrumming, but it was soon gone, and she wondered if it was just the pounding of her own heartbeat in her skull.

Then Misha and Viktor reappeared, and waved them on.

They had to emerge from the jungle within the borders for the foreign enclaves, or Nurayil or Nurayil. Yilayil meant "People of the People"; this designation was only for the nocturnal weasel folk. All other races were Nurayil-"People of the Stars."

They descended a hill, and Eveleen glimpsed buildings through the thinning trees.

At once they halted, and Misha and Viktor withdrew into the trees. Ashe nodded at Eveleen, Ross, and Saba, and the four started down the trail, Eveleen walking with Ross, and the other two just behind.

Eveleen felt her palms sweating. She knew her story, she felt comfortable in the simple forms of the question-rituals, but still, her adrenaline was spiking.

A series of round, low buildings were the first things they saw. Each had a round opening, into which beings of several kinds moved in and out. Eveleen felt slightly rea.s.sured when she saw those who met one another on the trail make the expected ritual gestures before one or the other stepped aside. The heavy air did not carry the sounds of the ritual responses, at least not at first. As they neared the first building, she could hear the tweets, whistles, and drones of many beings communicating.

It was all much quicker and noisier than she had ever imagined. She saw Ross staring around, his forehead tense. Ashe focused directly ahead of him; Saba, however, gazed around, her eyes narrowed.

Almost at once they encountered three short, heavy-looking bipeds with tough, b.u.mpy hides. Their whistles were so high and quick Eveleen almost couldn't follow, but she recognized familiar notes among them.

Saba whistled in return, and stepped aside. The other three followed. The beings continued on their way without another glance.

Beside Eveleen, Ross let out a long, slow sigh.

It worked! It worked! Etiquette declared that the stranger defer to all; when one met acquaintances, the one who performed a service the more recently took precedence.