Xi’an, China

Special Research Unit 32

June 25th, 2032 CE

To

June 25th, 165 CE

Yuè Daiyu bolted upright in bed from a confused dream of fear and flight and chaos.

It took an instant before she realized that she was hearing the strobing screech of a siren, not simply dreaming it.

“Tā mā de!” she swore, putting the heels of her hands to her eyes, then forced herself into action.

Starting with hitting the light switch. The clock said it was just midnight, which meant she’d had an hour and a half of sleep after falling thankfully into bed at the end of a long day’s mental and physical work—which was worse than nothing, in a way. She could feel the sand grinding in the gears of her brain.

“Another practice run? It’s only been two days!”

Reaction to the siren was automatic, though, drilled in by months of hearing that sound at unpredictable intervals day and night. She bolted out of the sheets and threw on the clean sturdy field uniform that always hung ready in the little cubicle, stamped her feet into the boots, cinched the belt and swung the full pack on her back, and put on the billed cap. The only thing that wasn’t drilled in was the last-instant snatch at her mother’s pendant from its place on the little bedside table.

Just in case. The news had been very bad just lately—and the gaps in the news were even worse, if you kept up with things.

It was old, even as a pendant; family legend said it had been handed down from mother to daughter since it was found in one of the first modern archaeological digs, over a century ago. The centerpiece was an Eastern Han coin—round, with a square hole in the center—in a gold ring that enclosed the ancient bronze. It dated from the reign of Emperor Ling, one thousand eight hundred and sixty years ago . . . 

Which is ironic, when you think about it, flitted through her mind as she dashed out the door.

The lights were strobing red in the corridor outside as she tucked it away beneath shirt and jacket. She turned right and trotted all the way to the operations room, just as she was supposed to; the Colonel would be waiting, expressionless but watching a time readout.

She was sweating a little by the time she got there, after running nearly a kilometer with twenty kilos on her back, despite being in the best condition of her life—the training here included a strong physical element. Her degree in Chinese historical linguistics was one of the reasons she’d been picked for this, but not the only one; youth and health were among the others.

The technicians sitting at their workstations or tending the hulking machinery—which she didn’t pretend to understand; she was a historical linguist, not a physicist—were sweating too, under the stiff discipline. The sweat of fear. She looked over at Liu Xiang as she took her place on the circle of gridwork. The building was semi-underground because that circle was as close as they could come to the ground level of long, long ago. The roof above them was a ferroconcrete dome.

“Colonel?” she asked quietly.

He was a square-faced, stocky-fit, gimlet-eyed man just turned forty, a decade and a half older than her. She wasn’t altogether sure what he was a colonel in, even after months of working together, but he’d proved disconcertingly knowledgeable about all the team’s specialties. They’d all cross-trained so that they could help each other . . . or perhaps replace each other if necessary.

She was morally certain he’d been at some university or another at some point in his life, though, whether he was Army or People’s Armed Police or something more obscure.

“This is not a drill,” he said calmly.

He spoke excellent standard Mandarin, but with an occasional slip that made her think he came from the northeast, up near the Russian border. She hadn’t dared to ask. Now she felt a jolt of genuine fear. That meant . . . 

“Now keep silent,” he added.

The other three members of the team trotted in moments later: Yang Biao, the engineer; Hú Bingwen, the agronomist; and Ding Àilún, their historian proper, who was indeed handsome and cheerful most of the time as his name indicated, but not right now.

Do I look as scared as they do? I hope not!

They all glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes as they took their places and sat on the gridwork. Theory was one thing, reality another. None of them were married or parents; that had apparently been part of the selection process, but everyone had some family.

The cargo surrounded them on three sides and part of the fourth, in carefully arranged heaps lashed together with rope—hemp rope, at that.

Not all that much of it was hers; some books, some data on the military-grade laptops and drives. Most of the gear was in Biao and Bingwen’s care, and they were checking it over compulsively with their eyes. Probably as a distraction. All of them were older than her, but not by more than a few years—she suspected that she’d been brought in when the original choice . . . 

Almost certainly a man, her mind added.

 . . . disqualified himself somehow. She carefully didn’t think of what had probably happened to him then. This was an ultra-secret project. She hadn’t believed what it was, not at first, though she’d carefully not said anything to that effect.

A stiffly self-controlled messenger delivered a paper to Colonel Liu, and added:

“The strike on Vienna will be in the first wave, sir.”

“Good,” Liu said, nodding. “We need no competition . . . where . . . we’re going.”

Oh.

Nothing had ever been officially said, but she’d heard the rumors that this setup was a copy, and the original was in Austria, of all places. Apparently serendipity combined with good espionage had given them this chance to correct the dead-end . . . literally, a mass-death-dead-end . . . that the world seemed to be in.

Then the Colonel raised his voice: “You labor to ensure China’s future!”

A different future starting far in the past, Daiyu thought; it wasn’t quite a lie, exactly, but—

It won’t look anything like our China by this date. Which is much better than nothing, I suppose.

“Commence the run!”

Fingers tapped keyboards, voices murmured low. A whine built; even now, men and women labored at one piece of equipment, snapping in parts and stepping back and nodding at the last instant.

Then someone’s voice broke in, half a scream, as they leapt to their feet:

“Beijing! Beijing is gone! Multiple hits!”

Daiyu hissed involuntarily. She’d lived there for much of her life, her parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had been academics at Beijing University—had been since it was the Imperial University, generation after generation, apart from a brief exile when the Japanese occupied it and a not-too-bad rustication during the Cultural Revolution. The thought of the blast wave leaving burning rubble in its wake . . . 

Biao grunted as if someone had punched him in the stomach; he was an only child, like most people their age, but she knew his parents and grandparents lived there.

Did live there. Died there right away, if they’re lucky.

Another shout: “Missile inbound for Xi’an.”

Daiyu jammed a knuckle into her mouth and bit. Her parents were dead, and her grandparents; she had a cousin but had never met him. But that missile was headed for her. Some part of her mind scolded her for selfishness; billions would be dying soon, millions already had . . . 

“Initiating!” someone said. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . ”

Flicker.

Everything seemed to freeze for an instant, and then things were back to normal . . . if you could call this instant of mass destruction anything resembling normal.

Flicker. Flicker. Like a hiccup in the flow of time, freezing everything outside the circle of gridwork and slowing it down within.

“Missile approaching,” the same voice said, an edge to it now. “Countermissiles launching . . . missile still on course.”

Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. Flicker.

The world was strobing faster and faster, like some crazed early film where things moved jerkily.

“Missile nearing destruction radius—

An ear-piercing whine filled the air, going up and down the scale from shrill to bass as those disconcerting moments of stasis struck. Sparks flew, and a man whose nerve had broken was caught dashing towards them in a great arcing discharge, shaking and dancing like a spastic puppet.

Colonel Liu’s face was still like something carved of granite, his breathing even, but there were beads of sweat on his brow.

FlickerFlickerFlickerFlicker—

Everything was in slow motion now, each moment of frozen time blending into the next. She noticed his eyes glancing up . . . over what seemed like an eternity. Daiyu followed his gaze . . . and stifled a scream with difficulty. The concrete dome above them was bulging.

Bulging slowly.

It was like being paralyzed and seeing death stroll towards you at a leisurely pace, taking its time. Cracks spread, and plaster fell away from the smooth surface, drifting downward like vast snowflakes. The concrete cracked too, a huge crumbling hemisphere of it pointed straight at her. As if a giant fist was striking it from the east.

And it is, she thought . . . or mentally gibbered. A fist of red-hot air rammed forward faster than sound.

The cracks in the thick concrete spread. She could see the steel rebar within now, snapping like thread and shooting sparks as it did.

Light behind that, blinding-bright, growing, heat beating on her face.

A dull roaring noise, drawn-out and slow. Screams, equally bass and low.

 . . . flickflickflickflick . . . 

Blackness.

* * *

Daiyu realized her head hurt even before her eyes opened. Hurt badly. Blood was running down her upper lip, salty and nasty in her mouth. She moaned and stirred, coughed and spat.

Then she realized she was lying on . . . 

Dirt, she thought. And I can smell night-soil.

That meant composted human wastes used as fertilizer. Relief uncoiled within her.

We made it! We’re here! We’re not going to die right away!

That cut through the pain and grief. Then she heard the distinctive shick-shank of an automatic pistol being cocked, and shed her pack and forced herself to her feet. The metric ton of . . . stuff . . . they’d brought with them was intact, but in the space left for an entrance Colonel Liu was standing with the weapon in his hand. In front of him was a clutch of . . . 

Peasants, she thought. Badly frightened peasants. Angry frightened peasants.

The reason they were angry was obvious; the Chinese time-travelers and their gear had landed on a field of nearly ripe vegetables, bok choy, broccoli and eggplant and others now thoroughly crushed and scenting the air with bruised green smells. These people probably got some of their money selling them in nearby Xi’an—Chang’an, this far back—and needed the money very badly. This . . . this time and place . . . wasn’t friendly to the poor.

They were frightened because the strangers and their baggage had appeared out of nowhere without pack-animals or porters or wagons—though they probably hadn’t seen the arrival, or they’d still be running and screaming “sorcery” over and over again.

All of them were ragged, dressed in short lap-over jackets held with rope belts, with loose pants below for the men and skirts for the women, and mostly bare feet. She could smell them from here, too, even with her nose bleeding. Old sweat sunk into coarse cloth, unwashed bodies . . . 

Colonel Liu hadn’t opened fire. Daiyu didn’t think that was his automatic response to any confrontation. But shoot he would if he had to, with pellucid ruthlessness. The peasants would run when they saw some struck down by magic, with sounds unlike anything they’d heard before. Right now they were brandishing hoes—she noted that the heads were heavy cast iron.

He called out to her:

“Your translation services would be appreciated, Doctor Yuè. They don’t appear to understand my attempt at the language at all.”

She walked—hobbled and reeled—over to him, mopping at her lip with a tissue as she did; one of her many pockets was full of them.

And I’ll never get any more, some distant part of her mind gibbered. Never any more . . . of so many things.

There was a trickle of blood on his neck, from his left ear. She suppressed an impulse to mop at it, and spoke to the mob of two dozen farmers and the families behind them with both her hands raised, palms open:

“Please, good people, listen to what I say,” she said in her best stab at the late stage of Old Chinese spoken towards the end of the Eastern Han period.

Or very early stage of Middle Chinese, she noted absently; that was still a matter of dispute.

And they’re so short! And skinny! Bent backs, missing eyes, skin diseases . . . 

What the peasants were saying—or shouting—didn’t sound at all like modern standard Mandarin, or even the Mandarin dialect that would be spoken here in her time. Much harsher and choppier, with consonant combinations that didn’t exist anymore and hadn’t for a long time, over a thousand years.

Not for a long time in my age. But in this one, yes, this is current, she thought, the knowledge disorienting in its strangeness.

The tone system of Middle Chinese was just now starting to develop from consonant-cluster endings in Old Chinese, and while the Middle Chinese system was ancestral to what she’d grown up speaking, it wasn’t very much like it all. A little more like Min, or Cantonese or Fukienese, those were comparatively archaic, but not very like those either.

The peasants stared at her. The one in front brandishing a hoe—he had a few wisps of beard, mostly grey—lowered the tool and frowned. He scratched at the bandana-like covering tied around his head.

Then he spoke.

She caught exactly one word for certain: djuj, meaning who.

Probably in a sentence meaning:

Who the hell are you people and why have you destroyed some of our crops?

Daiyu turned to Colonel Liu, flogging her aching head into working order by sheer willpower:

“Sir, they’re speaking a, ah, a dialect of Eastern Han. A rural western dialect of Eastern Han. What I know is the best reconstruction we have of the literary, court speech of Luoyang, the—”

She shifted to Old Chinese: “—the Eastern Capital—”

The old peasant caught the name of the city and spoke excitedly to his fellows. Then they all laid down their tools, dropped to their knees, and bowed.

The elderly peasant spoke again, much more slowly, and she thought he was trying to mute the distinctive sounds of his local speech. He evidently knew that court language was different from his, but not enough to realize she was speaking a weird variety of it.

She nodded, repeated what she thought he’d said back to him, and he nodded enthusiastically.

“Sir, he says he’s sending his son to—”

She pointed north.

“—Chang’an.”

That was the ancient name of Xi’an. It had been an imperial capital for a long time, in the Qin period after the First Emperor unified the country, and then in the initial, earlier period of the current dynasty known as the Western Han, before the brief interregnum of Wang Mang in—

Her mind did a skip. About a hundred and fifty years ago, as of now, she told herself. This now is your now now!

Luoyang was a long way east of here; hence the name of the second phase of that dynasty, Eastern Han. Her folk still called themselves Han people . . . 

“The boy . . . young man . . . will go fetch some sort of official.”

“Excellent, Doctor,” the Colonel said, holstering his pistol.

Behind her she heard groans, and saw the others sitting up and wiping at dribbles of blood from noses, ears, and eyes.

“We will need transport,” the commander of their party continued.

She nodded and turned back to the old peasant man.

“We . . . will . . . need . . . carts,” Daiyu said slowly, trying to make each word distinct. “Several . . . carts. Carts. Wagons.”

“Carts!” the man replied, just barely recognizable as the word to her, nodding, and pointing to the gear with a questioning expression.

He’d caught that at least; and this close to a city, market-gardeners like these probably had a few. Handcarts, if not animal-drawn.

I don’t think we’ve invented wheelbarrows . . . not quite yet.

She nodded again.

The Colonel pulled replica coins from a pocket, held on a string through their central holes, and handed them over. The villagers’ enthusiasm grew; those bronze coins were probably more than they’d expected to get from this field.

Their baggage included precious metals and jewels, enough to make them rich by here-and-now standards.

If this official doesn’t have us killed and take it when he arrives, she thought with a shiver.

There were two rifles in the baggage . . . but if they had to use them . . . 

Copyright © 2024 by S.M. Stirling

S.M. Stirling is the New York Times best-selling author of the Draka series, the Lords of Creation series, and the Emberverse series, among others. With David Drake, he is the author of several novels in the General series. He cowrote novels in the Falkenberg's Legion series with Jerry Pournelle. A former lawyer and amateur historian, he lives in New Mexico with his wife, Jan.