Echoes In Time # with Sherwood Smith

  "Yes. Please." She lifted a hand.

  He bent and slid his arm round her shoulders. So light, she was!

  He rose, lifting her—and realized that his strength had been sapped as well.

  "I can walk. Just help me balance," she murmured.

  Gordon let her feet touch ground, and together they proceeded slowly up the steps, each of them soon breathing harshly.

  They stopped when Saba made a sign. Both sank down onto the steps, Saba leaning against the stone wall. Gordon undipped his canteen and they both took deep swigs of water.

  Saba leaned her head against the rough wall. Her face in the dim lighting was drawn, but her eyes were steady and alert. "How'd you get in?"

  "Over the last couple weeks I marked at least three ways around those green guards," Gordon said with a grim laugh. "And I found that this building is riddled with enough tunnels to make the New York subway system look simple. I've been exploring them during the early morning hours. I even found your room. And I mean to take you there right now—unless you think my presence will endanger you."

  Saba canted her head, her eyes going unfocused. Gordon watched in dismay, hoping she was not about to fade out on him—but then she blinked, and saw him again, and smiled faintly. "No. No trouble."

  He didn't ask. He could be patient.

  When she was ready, she nodded, and again they moved up the stairs, drunken-sailor style.

  "It's not… as far… as I thought," she panted when they had neared the top—but still she had to stop and rest.

  This time, though, it was a short rest. She gulped some water, drew in a deep breath, and straightened up. They continued on, straight to her room.

  No one was about. Saba reached, palmed the door open, and they passed inside. Full-spectrum lighting, somehow calibrated to be comfortable for the human eye, clicked on.

  Gordon helped her to the narrow bed, and she collapsed gratefully. "I have a lot to tell you," she murmured. "Let me catch my breath."

  Gordon looked around the chamber. It looked comfortable; his attention was immediately drawn to the unfamiliar computer system. "Is this the Yilayil terminal? May I turn it on?"

  She nodded.

  He touched the keypads, noting how different they were from human keyboards. The screen lit, and some of the pads glowed faintly.

  Yilayil script flowed across the screen. With difficulty he made out some of the words, then he shook his head. He'd make no sense out of this system. He closed it down again.

  Saba said, "First, tell me, please. What did you hear? I mean last night."

  "Voices. Whistles, trills, chants, and a lot of percussives that I could not identify. I heard you speak to someone. I only caught a few words, something about you being ill. That was the most distinct voice. Then there was just the chanting, on and on and on, until it either ended or your battery ran low: it faded suddenly into quiet, then silence. I tried to raise you, couldn't, so I reported to Irina, and moved in myself to check things out."

  Saba opened her eyes. "The Yilayil are not…" She paused, then frowned slightly. "That's not true. They are the predominant culture, and all others are shaped to them, but the drive to conformity is not engendered by them merely for the sake of dominance. The issues behind ti[trill]kee are a response to yet another, greater…" Her voice suspended, and once again her gaze went diffuse.

  This time the reverie, or whatever it was, lasted far longer.

  Gordon drove his teeth into his lip, fighting for patience. He sat at her side, waiting, and again she blinked and focused on him.

  After a few seconds, he prompted, "There is someone else behind the Yilayil ti[trill]kee?"

  Saba breathed in and out, her brow furrowed in perplexity. Then she said slowly, "The harmony is Yilayil, but it is an attempt to understand the incomprehensible. Almost, I wish to say, the—the ineffable, except that carries spiritual connotations, does it not? And these are finite beings, that is ones with corporeal existence, I am quite sure of that—though as yet I am sure of little else concerning them."

  "So there is yet another race here, is that it?" Gordon said.

  "Yes, but they exist outside of time."

  "Impossible."

  She shook her head slightly. "It's true. I don't know how, but I know this much: they knew I was coming. They gave me Zhot, and Rilla, and the Virigu I know. The carving out front was waiting for me. From each I have learned many things. Rilla has looked out for my comfort. I believe it is she who programmed my room, turned on my computer. The Virigu, I have come to realize, are in some ways empaths. They sense emotions, and perhaps—in some way—patterns of thought."

  Gordon nodded. "Go on."

  "As for Zhot, he seems to be the prime communicator.

  He kept trying to get me to 'taste color' and the like, at the same time as I had to learn to think outside temporal limitations. It's, oh, a little like Zen, I think. Koans of synesthesia, to break apart the unity of the sense that bars the time sense. Perhaps the entities even knew that music would be the metaphor, the catalyst, for understanding… It sounds egocentric, doesn't it, to surmise that music has developed here in preparation for my coming?"

  "I can believe anything, if you present enough proof," Gordon said with care.

  Her slim, dark fingers pressed against his wrist. "Ah, my anchor, my link to reality." She laughed soundlessly. "Here's what I can discern. These entities are not in constant communication with the House of Knowledge, or the beings in it. That would overpower them, remove their free will."

  "How do you perceive them, then?"

  "Voices, in the mind—through the music," Saba said.

  "I heard nothing like that," Gordon said.

  She looked at him. "Did you understand everything you heard? Did you taste and feel the music? Did you"?" She trilled a Yilayil term that he did not comprehend at all.

  "One of the temporal verbs?" he guessed.

  She nodded. "It takes all the senses to comprehend the deepest symbols, and when one is able to do that, one can— partially—hear them."

  "And so?" he prompted.

  "And there is some event nigh, something important. We are crucial to it."

  Gordon thought of the disappearance of the First Team. He did not like what he was hearing. All the clues added up to something drastic—like human sacrifice. And Saba was lying, weak and enervated, in the midst of what might be the enemy.

  Gordon repressed a sigh.

  His communicator pulsed him then, and he clicked it on. "Ashe here."

  "They are returned," Irina's voice filled the room. "All of them. They are all going to Ross and Eveleen's room."

  Saba nodded. "Go. I'll be safe enough."

  Gordon nodded, reaching to unclip her com. She pointed to the recharger, and he slid it in, and saw the red light come on. There were still charges left in it, he saw with relief. Not many, but enough.

  Then he got to his feet, hesitating.

  "I will be all right," she said.

  "I'd feel better if you could contact me," he said, pointing to the recharging com. "Shall I leave you mine?"

  "No," she said. "You're the leader, you must have one. I know I am safe, for now. I need sleep."

  Gordon nodded, thinking that if need be he could break in again—and this time bring Ross and the other men.

  Sneaking out of the House of Knowledge was strangely easy. He attributed it to the daylight hours—and once he was outside, he did not need to use care.

  Once he was outside of the House boundaries, he moved rapidly across to the Nurayil dorm, taking care not to confront anyone who would demand precedence.

  The rain kept him cool, though he was thoroughly soaked by the time he reached the dorm.

  Inside Ross and Eveleen's chamber, he found everyone on the team—that is, everyone except Irina. They all sat against the walls, looking tired and thin. Everyone had water at hand, and he smelled the cream-cheese-and-lemon odor of the protein food they all seemed to crave.

>   Viktor was also there. Gordon saw him and sighed with relief.

  "False alarm, then?" he asked.

  Misha gave him a wry grin. "Not," he said, "even remotely true. We have much to report."

  "How's Saba? Do we need to do something?" Eveleen asked, as always quick in her concern for others.

  "I found her. She's still there, but she insists she's safe. I'll give you a report on what she said after you explain." He waved a hand at Misha, but he turned to survey them all.

  "We think we've solved the mystery of the First Team," Ross said.

  "What's this?" Gordon drew in a deep breath, trying to marshal his thoughts.

  "The flyers," Eveleen spoke now, her eyes tired but alert. "They speak a kind of Russian. They were fixated on us because they recognized us, sort of, but humans have turned into mythic figures for them."

  Gordon felt as if someone had hit him in the head. He sat down, took a long drink of water, then he said, "Go ahead. Talk."

  "They took Viktor to talk to," Eveleen said. "Viktor heard it all while we were traveling to get him."

  The Russian nodded, his eyes exhausted.

  "They told it in stories. They live in primitive surroundings, but in recognizable tree huts. They lost technology, somehow, when they gained the wings—"

  "Gained wings?" Gordon cut in. "Is that what you're trying to tell me? They all just… dropped everything and sprouted wings?"

  "That's not clear," Ross said. "They told it in a form of poetry, apparently." He looked over at Viktor, who nodded again. "Their first generation is recognizable—by the names— as our First Team. We still don't know how or why they abandoned all their gear, and the mission, and ran off. How they got to the island isn't clear, and when the wings happened isn't either."

  "Babies," Viktor said. "Their babies flew."

  "And they stayed there, and built a new culture," Eveleen added. "They seem quite happy—exuberant, even. They really wanted us to stay with them, but when we said we had to go they were willing to let us leave."

  "They're blue," Ross added. "Sky-colored. The First Team are the ancestors of our flyers down the timeline!"

  "So they all—what, mutated? That's nonsense. Genetics doesn't work that way."

  "Of course not," Vera cut in, her voice uncertain. "This is what Irina and I have recently discovered, and what Ross tells us about these Jecc corroborates it. From separate evidence, Irina found out that the Moova practice infanticide—culling out genetic defects. Not by choice. See, a week or two ago, her employer was desolate. The grief was the more profound because it was apparently the third one in the family in a year. At first we thought it was illness, but apparently nobody suffers illness. There are no doctors—as least among the Moova. But I don't think there are any for the other races either."

  "We're sick," Gordon pointed out the obvious.

  Vera nodded, her face troubled. "We will come to that. First, last week. We did not report this, as we had no real evidence, only our guesses. But we decided that desperate measures require quick action. Irina told me to decoy the Moova, and she did some excavating on their computing system, and found out that they, too, have altered from their original form, but it is more slow. They try desperately to halt the changes through this practice. What seems to be happening to the races here is genetic manipulation, on an impossible scale."

  "Genetic manipulation?" Gordon repeated.

  Ross laughed, a sardonic, unpleasant laugh, quite unlike his usual. "Oh, but you haven't figured out the good part yet. What it means."

  Eveleen's brown eyes were huge now, and strained. "What it means is, this is what's happening to us."

  CHAPTER 26

  ROSS WATCHED THE news impact Gordon Ashe. As usual, the archaeologist showed little reaction other than the narrowing of his blue eyes and a tightening of his shoulders.

  Then he looked up, his mouth grim. "Where's Irina?"

  Eyes turned to Vera, who shrugged. "Probably either finishing her work or else following up on something."

  "Following up on what?"

  Vera shrugged again. "She does not always talk about what she's working on… She finished entering Pavel's notebook, and a couple of evenings she sneaked out—"

  "Wanted Svetlana's data," Misha interrupted. "I gave her a disk containing what was pertinent to us."

  "So is she preparing a report for us all, then?" Gordon prompted.

  "I don't know," Vera said. "All I know is, she has been gone some evenings, verifying data was all she said. I asked her twice. More than that, she ignores the question." Vera gave a rueful smile. "As for me, I confess most evenings I am asleep within moments after we leave here. I am hungry very much, I want protein, I need sleep very much." She winced, and shrugged again, this time rolling her shoulders as if her back itched. "Do you think if we do not leave soon we're going to sprout wings?"

  Misha laughed.

  "No," Viktor said. "Our bones, they are losing mass."

  That doused Misha's humor like water on a fire.

  "None of us have much body fat left," Eveleen observed, then she turned to Vera. "You two have analyzed all our food. Is that cheesecake stuff we all seem to want made out of protein?"

  "Yes," Vera said.

  "Fueling molecular changes," Gordon said. "Our metabolisms are working in overdrive. Some of the malaise is probably due to just that." He frowned slightly, then turned to Viktor. "What other data did Irina need for verifying?"

  "My maps," Viktor said. "Needs for final report."

  Gordon looked down at his hands, then up. "The mission has been canceled. Zina is not going to authorize a trip back to the First Team's time." He did not look Misha's way.

  Ross glanced at the blond Russian, who smiled derisively.

  I'll bet anything he's already tried to make a jump on his own, Ross thought, and tried not to let it annoy him. He didn't know for certain, and anyway, the Russian had obviously been denied access to the machinery that set the time jumps—to the past.

  "So let's end it," Gordon finished. "Let's all put in a regular day—a last data gathering—while I work on getting Saba out, and then we're all out of here."

  "Sounds good to me," Ross said.

  "I am ready," Vera added, rolling her eyes.

  Misha said nothing.

  Gordon got to his feet as he unhooked his communicator from his belt. "Saba doesn't answer," he said a moment later, then, as he started out the door, Ross heard his voice. "Irina? Listen, here's the latest…"

  "Anything else?" Ross said when the others had not moved. He looked at Vera, who bit her lip, but his question was really for Misha.

  "Good night," Misha said, and he went out. Viktor followed, sending a brief grin over his shoulder.

  Vera left in silence.

  * * *

  SABA TOOK HER medicine, then went down to the refectory to eat something. When that was done, she went directly to the chamber where Zhot had given his lessons—and there she found Rilla and Virigu waiting, alone, obviously for her.

  In Yilayil, Saba said, "I must talk about what I experienced last night, for I have many questions."

  Rilla said, "We are here, by your desire."

  Saba looked at Virigu, and Rilla forestalled her by saying, "A question about Virigu's knowledge of our motives and desires is best addressed to me, for just as your people do not go before others without garments to conceal the outer being, so the Virigu do not talk of what is not spoken aloud."

  Saba parsed that, thinking: So telepathy is a taboo? A brief spark of humor lit her mind, instantly extinguished. She hoped that Virigu did not hear it, even as she acknowledged to herself that one culture's (or race's) taboos almost invariably seem funny to another that does not share them.

  Saba said, "I wish to understand what I saw/sensed/experienced last night."

  She paused, considering the sudden flowering of sensory images when she used the weighted verb. It had tasted. Felt. She had seen it as well.

  "You joine
d the Great Dance," Rilla said. "You have found ti[trill]kee, and so you are a part of the dance. You must be a part of the dance," she added.

  Saba said carefully, "This is why the carving of myself outside the House of Knowledge?" The verb for carving tasted of destruction and distortion. Strange.

  "Carving?" Rilla repeated, then she made a gesture of negation. "It is always there. It grows there."

  "Grows," Saba repeated. "You mean, it's a living tree? Or was?" she amended, remembering that there were no branches on it, no leaves. The carving was a tall pole, the image at the top, recalling totems of various Earth cultures— except where those were rough, this one was remarkably smooth and polished, an almost photographic representation of her own face.

  Rilla glanced at Virigu, who said something in a low murmur, and then she faced Saba. "It is not done, to take the trees, kill them, and make them into semblances of something else."

  Saba said, "But it was done in the past, right?"

  Again Rilla made a gesture of negation. "It is there, always. For all beings to see. For you to come and find your place."

  "So you are saying that it grew there, for us to find?"

  Virigu and Rilla agreed.

  Saba shivered. Again she felt that weird tug at her brain, as if from inside. It wasn't as if someone tried to access her mind—like a computer accessing a disk. It was as if a planet-sized vastness waited outside a small bubble, trying to…

  The image would not come; she felt vertigo. Even searching for a mental verb did not work, because each one was wrong.

  She did yoga breathing, then said, "Who are the… entities/outside/time—" Again, a flash of synesthetic experience almost disoriented her. "There is someone in this world besides the races we see, is there not?"

  "Yes," Rilla said. "It requires us all to hear/taste/see/touch/ experience, it is important."

  This time it was Rilla's verb that sent the wash of synes-thesia through Saba.

  "Why is it important?" Saba asked. "I too feel it. I need to know why this is important."

  "Zhot tells us," Virigu said, "that you are the one who hear/taste/see/touch/experiences the most. All of us are a part, but you translate it for the temporal mind."