CHAPTER FIVE
The government courier vessel soared starward under photon thrusters, out to the “Primary Limit” (about thirteen thousand miles from planetary center in Earth’s case) where the local gravity field was less than 0.1 G. There the negative mass drive could alter the properties of space, reducing normal gravity ahead of the ship to produce an effective thrust of a couple of hundred Gs—fortunately imperceptible to its occupants, who would have been in free-fall weightlessness save for the ship’s artificial gravity—and Earth dropped rapidly astern. Under such a furious acceleration, it took relatively little time to reach the “Secondary Limit,” just short of the asteroid belt. There, with Sol’s gravity less than 0.0001 G, the drive could not merely fold space but wrap it around the ship, forming a field of negative energy to create a bubble in space-time that moved faster than the rest of space-time with the ship being dragged along within that bubble. Thus a way had been found around the sacrosanct velocity of light. (Not “through” it, as the theoretical physicists, still in denial after a century and a half, never tired of insisting.)
The drive’s efficiency was more or less directly proportional to the percentage of a ship’s mass that was devoted to generators and powerplant versus everything else, so ship designs always involved a tradeoff. Since time was of the essence, the ship they rode was a Comet class courier, built for speed (or pseudo-speed, as the theoretical physicists always primly corrected for the edification of anyone who would listen) and little else. To be sure, it incorporated certain features that were sometimes handy in specialized roles and did not add significant mass, such as state of the art sensors and a very sophisticated stealth suite. But it was certainly not designed for luxury. An interstellar liner that was designed for luxury would have required about three weeks to reach the Zirankhu system; they would be enroute for less than half that.
Still, they had eleven and a half of the standard days of Old Earth in which to endure the Comet’s passenger accommodations, and each other.
Those accommodations consisted of two two-person staterooms, by courtesy so called. In order to observe the proprieties of a culture whose conservatism in certain matters would have surprised the people of three or four centuries back, Jason and Mondrago took one of them, Chantal and Rojas the other. But Jason, who had less concern for the proprieties than some, arranged at various times to absent himself and let Mondrago receive Chantal as a guest. At such times, he kept to what Starways Shipbuilding, which produced the Comet class, was pleased to call the passengers’ lounge. There he sometimes socialized with members of the two-person crew. But it also sometimes brought him into Rojas’ company, and he made as much use of these opportunities as possible.
This proved not quite as difficult as he had anticipated. Rojas clearly had little regard for the Temporal Service, even its quasimilitary Special Operations Section. But she had a certain qualified respect for him, based on his overall reputation as well as her own observation of his performance, and his apprehension of professional jealousy on her part proved unfounded, for Rutherford as well as her own superiors had assured her that she was the ranking officer in charge of the investigation. And he had been pleased to discover that she shared his taste for Scotch, of which they had both been able to bring along a small private stock. Still, even with that lubricant, she was not exactly given to light, bantering conversation.
Nevertheless, there was one subject he felt he must broach with her, after some of the things he had heard from Mondrago.
He did so one “day” when they were alone in the lounge and all three crew members were occupied elsewhere. The lounge at least offered ample facilities for interactive electronic entertainment. But at the moment they were both simply sipping Scotch. “So, Major,” he asked with careful casualness, “how are you and Dr. Frey holding up?”
“I’m holding up quite well,” she relied expressionlessly. “As for Dr. Frey, you’ll have to ask her.”
“Oh. I thought you, being in such close quarters with her, might be able to shed some light.” Actually, Jason hadn’t thought anything of the sort. Mondrago had told him that Rojas hadn’t uttered an unnecessary syllable to Chantal during the entire voyage. “And she is, after all, at least partially my responsibility, since I represent the Authority, which sent her.”
“Yes, I know they did.” Rojas’ opinion of the Authority’s decision could hardly have been clearer.
Jason decided to cut to the chase. “You don’t like her, do you?”
Rojas didn’t even blink. “I am aware of her background,” she replied, somewhat obliquely but gaining Jason’s respect by not attempting any hypocritically indignant denials.
“Then you will also be aware that the Authority now regards her as having regained their trust, even to the extent of having once again sent her on an extratemporal expedition.”
“Yes, I know.” Once again, Rojas barely troubled to conceal her skepticism concerning the Authority’s judgment. But then her curiosity won out over her disdain. “I understand that you were her mission leader when she . . . ah . . .”
“Defected,” Jason finished for her helpfully. “Yes. We went back to 490 B.C. to observe the Battle of Marathon and determine if any Teloi survivals were still passing themselves off as Olympian ‘gods.’ We got more than we bargained for. It was then that we discovered the existence of the Tranhumanist underground and its program of subverting the past.”
“In alliance with the surviving Teloi, from what I’ve read,” said Rojas.
“Right, although the two groups ended up having a lethal falling-out. We’d brought Dr. Frey along as an expert on alien life-forms. And she was intrigued by the Transhumanists.” Seeing Rojas’ look of uncomprehending contempt, Jason decided he’d better explain Chantal’s cultural background. “She’s from Arcadia, Zeta Draconis A II. As you may know, that planet was one of those settled early, during the slower-than-light colonization era. But at thirty-five light years it was much further out than any of the others; those people wanted to be really isolated. And they succeeded in taking a holiday from history. Contact with them was reestablished only after the Transhuman Dispensation had been overthrown. They missed out on all that horror—to them it’s just dry history. So she was particularly vulnerable to the leader of the Transhumanist expedition, who was one of the castes genetically and bionically enhanced for charisma. You might say she lacked the cultural antibodies you and I have.” He chuckled. “That changed when he betrayed her.”
“I understand they cut out her implanted temporal retrieval device . . . and that you brought her back to the present anyway.” Rojas gave him a perplexed look. “I’m no expert on time travel, but I had always been under the impression that that was impossible.”
“Ordinarily, that’s true. If you don’t have your TRD to restore your temporal energy potential and return you to the linear present to which you’re inseparably linked, you’re stuck in the past. However the same ‘physical contact’ principle which enables the TRD to bring whatever or whoever it is attached to back to the linear present also means—for imperfectly understood reasons—that you can bring back whatever you can conveniently carry . . . like the items in Rutherford’s display case. I did that with Dr. Frey, who is a small woman. The Authority’s governing council almost had a collective stroke.” Jason smiled at the pleasurable recollection. “But the point is that in the end she saw the Transhumanists in their true colors. Ever since then, she’s been more than happy to put her knowledge of them at the disposal of the Authority and Earth’s law enforcement agencies, for the purpose of ramming it to them as hard and as often as possible. She detests them at least as much as you or I do.”
“Are you absolutely certain of that, Commander?” Rojas’ eyes grew very hard.
“Are you perhaps suggesting that I was allowed to bring her back, so she could act as a mole?” Jason, knowing he would need to maintain a working relationship with the IDRF major, restrained himself from using loaded words like paranoia. “If you knew the circumstances of her retrieval, you’d know there’s not the slightest chance of that. Not even Mondrago, who tends to be security happy, has ever entertained such a far-fetched notion.”
“Superintendent Mondrago is not exactly objective in this matter,” Rojas sniffed. “But even granting that she is not a conscious tool in a deliberate Transhumanist ploy, is it not possible that she may still cherish a latent attachment to them? I have known of such cases among supposedly returned defectors.”
Jason held onto his temper with both hands. “I remind you that the Authority—an organization never noted for lack of caution—deemed her reliable enough to be sent on an extratemporal expedition. I was the mission leader, and I can assure you that nothing in her behavior gave the Authority reason to regret that trust.”
“Yes, I read the report: an expedition to Port Royal, Jamaica in 1692. But that wasn’t really a test of her loyalties, was it? Correct me if I’m wrong, but to my knowledge that expedition never came into conflict with the Transhumanists. According to the report, the only Transhumanist encountered was a deserter from their ranks and therefore not likely to arouse any . . .” Something Rojas saw in Jason’s face caused her to trail to an awkward halt.
For all at once he was once again in the flower-burdened, cicada-singing warmth of Jamaica, blind to all save the magnificent black she-pirate and Transhumanist renegade Zenobia. Yes, blind to all, he thought with bitter self-reproach. Including the Observer Effect. I tried to fight it, knowing it cannot be fought. I tried to prevent her from dying, as I knew history required that she die. And precisely as a result of my folly, she died. That became part of the past . . . indeed, had always been part of the past. The Observer Effect won. It always does.
But not before she and I had done something that also became part of the past.
He had learned that from his great, great, great grandson, in 1865, across the James River from the smoldering ruins of Richmond, Virginia. And now he could never look at any North Americans or West Indians of obviously African descent without wondering if his own genes slumbered within them.
He returned to the here-and-now, and saw Rojas’ quizzical look. He saw no pressing need to enlighten her.
“Well,” he sighed, standing up, “I’ll take your concerns under advisement. But unless you can give me any specific, concrete reasons to doubt Dr. Frey’s loyalty—and so far you haven’t—I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. And, as I mentioned before, she’s my responsibility in my capacity as ranking representative of the Temporal Regulatory Authority.”
Rojas also rose to her feet. Her eyes squarely met his—she was very nearly his height—and while they held no overt hostility they were equally devoid of any flexibility. “I must beg to differ, Commander. I remind you that this is an IDRF investigation, of which I am in charge. All of its personnel are my responsibility. And it is my duty to be suspicious. I am disinclined to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.”
Jason met her eyes for a perceptible instant, then relaxed into the insouciance he had always found to be the best way of irritating Rutherford. “Well, then, Major, I suppose Dr. Frey will just have to rely on your objectivity and fair-mindedness, which of course will prevent your judgment from being clouded by either preconceptions or personal animosity.”
Rojas, unable to come up with an acceptable response to that beyond a muttered echo of Jason’s “Of course,” tossed off her Scotch and stalked from the lounge.
Thus matters stood when a Sol-like G0v star in the constellation of Serpens waxed in the forward viewports until it passed the ill-defined dividing line between “star” and “sun,” and the Comet’s drive field switched off as they passed the Secondary Limit of the Zirankhu system.