CHAPTER 35
Sean Elliott had an early meeting with Researcher Zep, Cryder, and a Eurasian gentleman identified as Controller Shan regarding the next transition. It was a conference room that looked high tech, but not dissimilar. Other than the melting door they all had here.
Shan shook hands, and started with, “I’mno great wiv oler Englsh. Dy get m sayn?”
It took Sean a second, but, “Yes, I understand you. May I ask you to speak slowly?”
“Wellgood,” the man agreed. “Cernt sked fer transit in two days. Extnt mass n persons. Kwip list fru Shuff Cryder. Any adds?”
“I think everything we need is already on his list. Correct?”
Cryder replied, “Everything you already requested is accounted for.”
Shan nodded. “Optim. Akchel count for return. Crect?”
He showed a display in the air that listed the known persons, the number of others, and the offspring.
“That matches what I noted, yes.”
“We’ll approx mass essimate. Dration’s twenny-one days. Retro point nearby, min complications.”
He looked at Cryder, who replied, “Short and simple, we hope. They’re favorable, get them organized, move, jump.”
Zep spoke. “The complication is bringing any offspring, but not local mates, which you report are all female.”
“Yes, best we could tell. The only Germanic women with them were already wives.”
She nodded. “You’ll have to separate them before the return.”
He whistled. “That’s going to lead to violence.”
“Possibly. If necessary, you can use force, and you have protection against most of their weapons.”
“What if they don’t agree?”
Cryder raised an eyebrow and didn’t quite smile, but that expression wasn’t mirth. “Then we bag and drag.”
“That could get awkward.”
Zep looked very, very serious as she advised, “If they can’t be made to come along, they have to be eliminated from the time frame.”
Sean felt a hard lump.
“I don’t think my orders cover that, and I’m morally not okay with it.”
Cryder gripped his wrist, and it seemed supportive.
“My job if we must.”
That wasn’t necessarily reassuring.
“How do you feel about that?”
The man shook his head. “Not at all good. Going to avoid that as much as we can.”
Sean let a held breath out. “Agreed. Thank you.”
“Might mean a lot of pig wrestling.”
“I’ll let Dalton know. He’ll be good for that.”
“Yes, and also have Arnet.”
Zep put in, “As much as possible, we want them all alive and unhurt. But they can’t stay in that time. Including the offspring.”
Sean felt tense and a bit nauseous. This was awful.
“I’ll do everything we can.”
Shan nodded. “Glad to have yr help. ’Scuse, must go.” He stood from the table and left.
Zep continued, “This is why we’ve tried to stop the ‘experiments’ and random jumps. Every one of these hurts the people caught in the…ripples is your term, and it fits. Recovery is going to be awkward, dangerous, expensive, and potentially deadly.”
“No way to stop it?”
“It’s a technology. There’s no way to stop someone using it, any more than one can stop people fabricating weapons or building their own astro sensors. Though more of the latter would be better. It does seem to be improving with refinement, but there are still going to be discontinuities and…deformities to time, is probably the best term.”
“Yeah, I get it. It’s an ongoing thing in human history. Develop a tech, screw things up, fine-tune it, hopefully in time.”
“Exactly. You might want to discreetly inform your people. That’s your decision of course. Shuff Cryder has some gear to assist in restraint, but that means you’ll need more people to stand alert.”
“Yes, so I’m glad it’s a shorter time frame.”
She nodded. “That was part of the consideration. But that schedule is fixed, so you must be persuasive quickly.”
“I understand,” he said soberly. Christ.
“We can summarize for your unit now. I won’t mention the mandate.”
“Thanks. I’ll need time to break that to them, and hopefully we won’t need to.”
“You have excellent leadership ability, even by our standards,” she allowed.
It didn’t come across as condescending, but he understood his society was considered less sophisticated than theirs. Gee, thanks.
“Okay, let’s do that, and let them prep personal gear. I almost wish we had more stuff to do. We do PT, and that’s about it at present. There’s none of our usual Army stuff to do.”
Cryder said, “If you had more time, you could do some of our training. It’s all graduated in pace.”
“You know, if you have a confidence course or such, that would be neat.”
He replied, “We do, but no free time.”
“I should have asked four days ago. I’m pleased you could configure this fast at least.”
Zep said, “They’ve been working hard to do so. They really are progressing the tech.”
“Okay, let’s tell them everything except that last detail.” He stood.
His people took it seriously but without significant reaction.
Dalton commented, “If we need to wrestle, these guys are strong. We’ll want to hit them low and have Arnet stun them.”
Caswell’s contribution was, “I’m trying to think of a way to propose it so they accept it as a demand from the gods, but I’ve got nothing so far.”
He simply said, “We’ll play it by ear.” He didn’t shrug. A good leader didn’t present like that.
Spencer noted, “They are probably going to insist on bringing loot and any acquired women. And they have children.”
Sean said, “Is there some way to differentiate the people during transition? Once we have them here, it stops being a problem what they think.”
Zep said, “That may eventually be possible, but is not at this time.”
“So we may need to be…persuasive.”
“Yes.”
“Can we detain that many?”
“We will first try to be persuasive. If need be, we can make offers of benefits.”
“We should take something impressive to show them, then.”
“Such as?”
“Valuables. Images and video of things and people. Quality weapons. Stuff they can handle here.”
“Will that work?”
“Some, at least. Their culture is used to movement and trade.”
“Okay. If that doesn’t work, we can stun and detain a certain number. We’ll take equipment to secure them, but that then means we have act as both internal and external security for a large number, and provide all their needs.”
“Is there a backup plan?”
“Their acquisitions come here. We’ll either send them back or keep them here.”
“I see.”
Zep shrugged. “It’s not ideal, but we can make it work.”
“You will only have twenty-one days. That is the best window we can arrange.”
“As we know where and who, that should be doable.”
“It should. You’ve been very capable at this, especially given your background.”
That was a bit insulting, though it probably wasn’t intended that way. They’d been given a mission and time frame, and accomplished it. That’s what one did. Nothing about it was too extreme—find an element, bring them back.
Two days later, they were ready to transit again. His troops had had plenty of social time and he was quite sure the single ones all got laid, which was a plus. The Army officially wanted monks who sat in cells between operations. In reality, soldiers who got to drink, have sex, and occasionally get in a recreational fight performed much better in the field.
They had an escort of experts as they rolled to the platform, hauling their personal gear. Ms. Zep was along and he raised a subject he’d wondered about.
“I have no idea if you can answer this, or if you will if you can. I noticed a relationship between displacements.”
“Oh?”
“The mammoths were from prior to the time frame we were in, and fairly local. Then we have the Gadorth, from Western Europe, and about eight thousand years before our time. The Romans were two thousand years and from northern Italy. The Indians were four hundred years and just down the road. We were from our time, and barely half that distance. It looks like there’s a mathematical relationship of longer time, shorter distance.”
She admitted, “It does, and I know that’s been studied. I am not informed if it’s considered relevant, and if so has been graded, or if it’s pure coincidence. Note the elements this time have a different set of time to distance, and Shug came forward to your time. I really don’t know. Only that all the details have been logged and are being studied.”
“This element had a casualty, and a child. How does this get fixed? How do deaths back then, and deaths out of place, and people missing, not screw up the time stream?”
“How’s your knowledge of temporal calculus?”
“Uh…none?”
She shook her head with a faint smile. “Then I can’t explain it to you, even if that was my field. I’m mostly a social scientist, so I don’t have much math past the tensors and unified calcs I did in school. But be reassured, none of these events pose a risk. The Temporality is fairly robust and can withstand being knocked about. The problem becomes if too many of them go on for too long.”
“What happens then?”
“There’s a risk of our world pinching off from the rest of what we think of as reality.”
“And going away? Lost?”
“Well, we’d still have history, and future, but it would be disconnected from yours. Of course, if you were here when it happened…”
“So there aren’t multiple time streams?”
She said, “I’m told they are possibly infinite, but there’s only one that matters to us.”
“Got it.”
“Think of it as pollution. A little isn’t really noticed outside its immediate area. Get enough of it, though, and it affects the entire system.”
“Our little was noticed by us.”
“Yes, it’s not an exact comparison. But your incident didn’t have any major effects. You were found once we identified the wave that displaced you, which was caused by something else entirely.”
“Can you say what that was?”
“Even if I knew, I couldn’t. I was brought in after we determined Arnet and Cryder had gone where they did, that several other bubbles had gone over the same crest, and that there was a good chance of human habitation where all those went.”
“Why do these waves seem to pick groups of people instead of empty dirt? Or are those only the ones we notice?”
“I wish I knew. Our temporal scientists won’t discuss it at all.”
That was probably for the best, he thought.
She did say, “We should be able to get you closer both physically and temporarily.”
“I’ve never heard that word in that context, but it fits and is fantastic.”
She smiled at last. “I see. It is correct, though.”
“Indeed. We’re ready.”
They gathered on the now familiar launch pad and awaited the transferen—
BANG!