Echoes In Time # with Sherwood Smith

  The creature didn't even notice, and Ross laughed silently to himself. So his old skills hadn't left him, eh?

  He'd given up that kind of life when he was recruited to the time agents—but on this occasion, he was glad he remembered how to pick pockets.

  He watched the Jecc at intervals while finishing a piece of work. The one he'd robbed discovered the missing chip, its head moving back and forth, but then it got right back to work. No further reaction.

  Ross went walking again, close behind a row of Jecc busy working away. Two of them didn't bother glancing up, and both of them within seconds were lighter of a filter and a measure tool respectively.

  And so the day went.

  Ross nearly laughed out loud a few times when he watched, from the vantage of his workstation, his victims discover their losses. Ross was careful to put his stolen booty in another location, usually in the parts section, after he got it. He still didn't know why the Jecc stole and hoarded parts that were readily available to everyone, but in case there was some kind of mysterious personal bond with these bits of machinery, he didn't want them to feel deprived. Just… warned? Startled?

  He examined his own motivations as he finished a last buffing job. At lunch he forebore telling Eveleen about his private game. He wasn't sure she would agree, and she looked so headachy he didn't want to risk making it worse for her.

  Maybe it was stupid, but it felt right.

  And so he decided to make a couple more five-finger discounts before the day ended—and he'd try it again the next.

  In fact, the idea of it made him look forward to another day for the very first time since his arrival.

  His first pinch was a bigger part, and the victim immediately turned on a neighbor and exclaimed in an excited tongue that was definitely not Yilayil. The neighbor touched the victim's muzzle, and it fell silent. Both looked around in a manner that reminded Ross forcibly of guilty children. He almost regretted his action, but not quite.

  No, not quite. One more pinch, he'd promised himself.

  He could see that Eveleen needed to quit for the day. Her hands moved slowly, and the angle of her head was expressive of weariness. He realized that he too was tired—only the adrenaline of his secret game kept him going.

  One more.

  He saw a Jecc just turning away from a partially disassembled drive unit. He reached, his fingers closed on the main component—

  The Jecc's reaction was a blur. A fraction of a second later Ross found his finger pinned to the workbench by a small hand as he gazed down into yellowish-gray unblinking eyes.

  CHAPTER 18

  SABA PRESSED HER fingertips to her cheeks.

  Hot.

  It was no longer a matter of tiredness, she was definitely sick. And with something she couldn't sleep off; Virigu had left her alone the day before after twice trying to summon her to work. Did the Yilayil never actully get sick? Or worse, was there some terrible taboo against illness? Saba had realized she did not have the vocabulary to tell her tutors that she did not feel well. She'd only said, repeating it several times, that she had to sleep more. But it had sufficed—they left her alone.

  And so she'd slept soundlessly for hours and hours.

  Today she'd woken up feeling slept out—yet her body felt no better. She was decidedly feverish, and weak.

  She shook her head. Time to stop being stoic and break out the pain relievers in her pack. She had a mission, she was the only one in this particular position, and she was not going to allow some stupid virus or flu to stop the work. Everyone else was doing their jobs, or Gordon would have sent her the signal indicating an emergency.

  Well, then. She could do hers as well.

  So she rose, walked through the weird glue-field shower, dressed, and took some medication, waiting long enough for it to start taking effect before she left her room.

  What I need, she thought as she moved slowly toward the tutorial chamber, is to comprehend the gestalt of this place. Her attention was fragmented, and her perception of the others was fragmented as well.

  On Earth, this had always been her initial approach to any new situation, to listen for patterns, for the music of the place. Though sometimes that "music" was hard to hear, it had to be there.

  That had been the most important lesson her mother had taught her. From her father, a doctor, she had acquired intellectual curiosity and ambition; from her mother, a wise woman of the Dorze, she had learned that yets, vocal music, was in fact a part of human life.

  Certainly it was among the Dorze, but her mother had convinced her that all peoples made music, even when they were not necessarily aware of it. To deliberately distort or deny music, as some modern cultures seemed to do, was to dehumanize one, and the healthy person merely sought music in other forms.

  These beings are not human, Saba thought. But this language is music. I think, therefore, that among those who can speak and hear, music must be a universal.

  And I must find the musical pattern here before I can try to understand these people—and find out what it is I am here for.

  When she arrived in the usual place, a breeze of cool, rainy-smelling air drifted across her fever-heated face. She breathed slowly, her eyes closing. It was wonderful, but it only lasted seconds.

  When she opened her eyes, Virigu was before her.

  "I, Virigu," she began, "take you now to the place where we store knowledge."

  Saba wondered if her day of sleep had been misinterpreted, but unless someone said something threatening, she refused to worry. It was going to take all her energy just to follow this new lesson—and to work on the task she had set herself.

  The new lesson proved to be with the Yilayil computers. Her delight and curiosity, however, were soon quenched by the stressful task of learning what each keypad meant. They did not correspond with the phonetic letters that the First Team had taught them; instead, they bore idealized keystrokes that were pressed in combination to build up the Yilayil ideographics, which Virigu now made clear it was time to learn.

  That meant thinking in Yilayil, and distilling symbols— alien symbols—into meaning for a human being.

  Virigu sat next to her at another keyboard, pressing one key at a time, while complicated symbols assembled themselves on the terminal. Patiently, calmly, she described each, then had Saba run through the definitions after which she practiced five over and over, one for each digit on her hand. The groups of five seemed a considerate way of teaching, but Saba wished she could learn this in twos. Or one at a time.

  Time sped by. She had the first grouping down and was superficially acquainted with the second group when subtle bell tones, just barely heard, indicated it was time for a change.

  They moved down to the refectory and Saba forced herself to drink some of the soup that all the others were taking. She knew that hers was—somehow—deemed appropriate for her biochemistry, for a quick glance in all the bowls showed different colors and consistencies for various races.

  But a tiny portion of her mind was afraid that the food might be part of her illness; at any rate she had no appetite. Still, she forced herself to eat the soup.

  Afterward it was time for another session with Zhot.

  This time the subject was knowledge.

  The other two tutorees were not present, only Saba, Virigu, and Rilla.

  Again—as it had been for the… her head panged as she tried to count up the days, all so alike. Three weeks? Four? As it had been all along, the higher-level modulations all incorporated strange tenses and conditional temporalities that seemed to confuse even Rilla and Virigu, it seemed.

  Yet Zhot persisted. After he had asked each to define knowledge, he turned to Saba, his whiskers stiff, his eyes intent.

  As always when confronted by differing paradigms, Saba opted for the simple.

  "Knowledge," she trilled, "is that which is known."

  Zhot droned/whistled a fast, complicated response.

  Consequence-of-knowing… as is-was… unf
olding from actions-will-be…

  Her mind refused the rest. She shook her head, saying, "What I am perceiving is that knowledge stands outside of time."

  "What is time?" was the immediate response.

  "The… artificial measure we apply to the progression of events," she said, again opting for the simple.

  "Has time meaning for those who exist all-at-once?"

  Saba bit her lip, fighting the urge to retort: Ask those who exist all-at-once, when you find them.

  She would not get angry. Conditional tenses—hypothetical states of being—the tutoring sessions with Zhot always seemed to involve these discussions. They hadn't yet touched on the other oddity in the language, the bizarre sensory correlations. She wondered what they portended.

  No wonder I'm not learning any faster, she thought with a bleak inner laugh. What happened to teaching language by talking about things beings actually do—like eating, sleeping, reading, working?

  But again she forced her fragmenting thoughts to clear, and concentrated.

  "I cannot answer that," she finally said. "But I would surmise that it does not."

  Zhot whirled around, his reptilian speed startling.

  "Beings outside of time experience those-who-live-in-time all-at-once." Then he fluted another phrase with upper-level modulations, similar to the first. "If beings-in-time not satisfactory at end-of-time, lives of those-within altered at beginning-of-time. Knowledge is—" He trilled the impossible tenses yet again.

  Saba fought the urge to hold her head in her hands, and abruptly Zhot whirled to Virigu and Rilla, this time demanding the purpose of knowledge with these givens.

  Rilla's answer was almost as difficult to follow as Zhot's, but not quite. From it Saba gathered that the purpose of knowledge was to avert entropy.

  When she heard the term, she remembered the discussion during which entropy had been the subject. Was there a connection after all? She'd assumed that the discussion topics were random, formed around various language lessons.

  Nothing is accidental, she thought, feeling a visceral sense of warning.

  Swiftly she reviewed the topics of discourse before her long sleep. One day the growth of trees and the seeding of new. Another day, the measure of celestial bodies moving through space. Before that…

  "… dance-above-decay," Zhot's voice interrupted her thoughts, and again she felt that inner zap.

  There was something going on here—something she simply wasn't getting. But she knew it was important.

  She forced her mind to clear—but Zhot had apparently finished.

  When Saba was back in her room, she found that the terminal had been turned on, and it extended from her wall, with a little bench below it.

  She drank some water, then sat down slowly. She traced the key-groupings she'd learned, and watched the symbols flow across the terminal. Then she tried two of the keys, just to see what happened—and the original meaning did not compound. Instead, a third meaning flowed on the terminal, something totally incomprehensible.

  She sighed and went to lie down.

  Time… no, don't think about their time. Her time. Time to stop fragmenting.

  Her message to self, Gordon, the mission, sickness, music, gestalt.

  Everything must be dismissed except gestalt.

  Gestalt outside-of-time?

  Don't even think about it. First just gestalt.

  She closed her eyes and slept.

  * * *

  RAIN SLASHED THROUGH the jungle growth, a steady roar that covered the sounds of humans making their way at top speed. Gordon followed Viktor and Misha, his mouth open to ease his breathing, his head aching with every step.

  Though the two Russians had readily admitted feeling the same symptoms suffered by everyone else on the team, their speed seemed undiminished. Could it be they felt less ill— that maybe living in the city had a deleterious effect beyond whatever it was that had affected them all?

  Gordon listened to Viktor's rasping cough, which intermittently punctuated the rain sounds, and decided he'd withhold judgment on relative intensities of illness.

  Instead, he concentrated on moving with the same speed, an effort that became increasingly difficult.

  Then—just when Gordon was thinking he'd be forced to call a halt—Misha whirled around and said, "Here it is."

  Gordon bent over, his hands on his knees, and fought to catch his breath. He noticed that both Viktor and Misha were breathing through their mouths; Viktor had dropped to the spongy moss covering the ground, but Misha leaned against a tree with a deceptively casual air. Gordon watched, amused, as he said, "Here what is?"

  "The last camp," Misha said, waving a hand as though producing a magical scene.

  Silently Viktor rose, digging in the tangled growth beneath a huge tree, and pulled out a pack—fungus-encrusted, discolored—but still recognizable as the type all the Russians carried.

  Misha rummaged around under a semicircle of bright flowers, revealing a ring of stones that had to have been deliberately set. Gordon nodded, impressed with the detective work that had gone into this finding.

  Misha dug into one of the packs and pulled out a warped notebook. He carefully opened it, and almost reverently held it out for Gordon's perusal, his manner so far removed from his usual that Gordon knew before he looked at it that this was a major find.

  He looked down at the close Russian writing, and puzzled out a few words.

  This was definitely from the First Team—one of the agents. Gordon recognized her name.

  He looked up at Misha. "Svetlana."

  Misha's face was uncharacteristically blank as he took the notebook from Gordon's hands, but before the archaeologist could speak, he gestured to Viktor, who handed him another notebook—and this time neither of them made a move to take it back.

  "We find nearby," Viktor said. "I show you his camp as well."

  Gordon looked down at the notebook, then up. 'This one is Pavel's."

  Misha nodded once. "I knew Pavel. I knew them all," he added, his accent very strong.

  "Have you read Pavel's notebook?"

  Again Misha nodded. "Skimmed it only, soon as we found it. He was the last. Svetlana here"—he indicated the notebook still gripped in his own hand—"disappeared before Pavel did."

  " 'Disappeared'?"

  Once again Misha nodded, his mouth grim. "We shall have to read these records more carefully, for much is not clear, but this I know. There are no bodies here. And Pavel saw no one die, beyond that first death. They just vanished. One by one."

  CHAPTER 19

  ROSS LOOKED DOWN into the Jecc's eyes, watching the pupils narrow like a cat's, then widen again.

  The Jecc chattered in a hissing language, then altered swiftly to Yilayil: "My progeny will be swift!"

  It grabbed for the tool, then scuttled away with a flick of its long tail.

  Ross stared after the creature in blank surprise. He'd expected any kind of reaction—anger, fight, outrage—anything but that. And why the comment about progeny, or had he gotten the words wrong?

  He'd scarcely had those thoughts when he felt the light touch of fingers against his hip, and he looked down to see another Jecc scurrying off, carrying the calibrating tool he had stuck in his pocket.

  Ross gave a laugh, and turned back to his job—for now.

  The war was on.

  No, not a war. It was a game.

  All the rest of the workday, Ross and the Jecc carried on this quick, strange interaction. No longer did he find them shoving him out of the way, or bumping him when he was busy—but all his small tools, especially those he tried to hide in his pockets, disappeared. He marked each Jecc who robbed him, and he made certain to get the tools right back again.

  The calibrating tool must have exchanged hands six times— mostly between Ross and two specific Jecc, one with a star made of purple dots over one eye, and another who was distinguishable by the braided pattern of dots down the back of its skull.

  R
oss began to see a pattern to the theft game. His calibrating tool, which was in no way remarkable from any other tool supplied by the Transport Department, would be nipped from him, and slid into a Jecc's pouch beneath its coveralls. If he watched closely—without being obvious about it—he could just see the edges of the pouch, though the Jecc kept this portion of their bodies covered. These pouches reminded him of a kangaroo pouch—or of a frog's mouth. After a time, the Jecc would reach in again, with a furtive movement, remove the tool, and use it, or set it nearby—and bingo! It would be stolen again.

  That was the pattern: in the pouch, out—steal, pouch, out—disappear, take back.

  In the meantime the work progressed steadily. Faster than before. Ross was aware of a change in atmosphere. No one disturbed him, though he saw the Jecc bump up against Eveleen and the other non-Jecc beings, exactly as they always had.

  Ross found his job much easier, despite the game.

  So he played it right until darkness—perceived through the big hangar at the end of their workstation—began to fall. No more disabled rail-skimmers had been brought in. The outside workers had already left their jobs.

  Ross was so bemused by the day's activities he was scarcely aware of the usual headache and scratchy throat. It wasn't until Eveleen fell in beside him, her eyes marked with tiredness, and her lovely voice sounding slightly hoarse, that he remembered he'd meant to quit much earlier.

  Sickness had become a part of life, it seemed.

  Since there wasn't anything he could do, there was always distraction. "The Jecc have pouches like kangaroos," he said to his wife as they walked out hand in hand.

  "Yilayil," she whistled.

  Ross grimaced, and repeated his statement in Yilayil. Truth was, he'd been thinking in English all day—not good for the mission, he realized. But so much easier!

  The word for pouch he didn't know—he created a compound, which was often done in Yilayil. Eveleen nodded, brushing raindrops from her face as she considered his words.