Soft background noise imitating ocean waves filtered through the speakers of Chicago Work Complex 7. Citizens glided on escalators and moving sidewalks through a spacious vista of glass and gleaming bronze. Although it was morning rush hour, with hundreds of people streaming into the complex for work, there was little noise beyond the soft chime of glass-enclosed lifts, the recorded ocean music, and the rush of real water from the half-story waterfall in the main reception lobby.
Despite the crowds upon the escalators or gathered at each lift station, there was no shoving, no insults, no sense of urgency. Most people wore bland, dreamy-eyed expressions. They moved slowly as though underwater, sufficiently aware of their physical surroundings to get off at the proper station, but focused primarily on the inward fantasy world created by the hologram chips implanted in their brains.
Noel Kedran, however, did not wear a head chip. He was not locked into a fantasy world, but remained firmly lodged in reality. Right now reality said that he was late.
“Hold that lift!” he called, shoving past a woman and sprinting for the elevator ahead. “Please! Hold the lift!”
The passengers already inside the lift stood like cattle. One, however, reached out and dreamily caught the closing lift doors.
Noel jumped aboard, and the doors glided closed behind him. Huffing in relief, he wiped the gloss of perspiration and blood from his forehead and shifted position so the scanner beam could read his security badge. A chime marked registration of his identity. The lift started up. It would stop automatically at his floor. He dabbed at the cut above his eyebrow with a wince. It would not stop bleeding, and it had begun to hurt.
“You should start earlier, man,” said the youth who had held the doors for him. The youth’s voice was soft and helpful. “Try a time monitor. Cheap at twenty-five creds, you know? Then you always get up on time. Guaranteed not to let you run late.”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Noel shortly and glanced away to stop the conversation. He would rather be deaf, blind, and senile than have any Life-design implants. There were chips to put you to sleep, chips to get you up, chips to boost your memory, chips to keep you from getting drunk, chips to make you feel drunk without suffering physical side effects, chips to arouse your passions, chips to depress your passions, chips to manipulate and control you just about any damned way you wanted. Life by design was not for him, not in a million years.
The lift stopped at the fifth floor, and he stepped off alone, veering right toward the security lock. A beam scanned him, registered clearance, and opened the first set of doors. He passed through the entire lock system quickly, but it wasn’t quickly enough to offset his gnawing sense of urgency.
He’d wanted to be the first one in this morning. He’d wanted to get at the new assignment list before anyone else. For seven months there had been a hiatus in all time travel while the bugs were worked out of the new LOCs. Noel had hated every boring, idle minute of it. He hated the increasing softness of the twenty-sixth century, with its technology that babied mankind into becoming a race of increasingly helpless morons. The gulf between the technocrats and the laborers-who droned their way through their jobs, then went home and fantasized in the sensory-rich worlds provided for them-grew wider all the time.
Back in the twentieth century, men had worried that their future meant being controlled by a vast, impersonal government. Instead, men had become controlled by their own dream states.
“The ultimate vegetable,” muttered Noel aloud.
“What’s that?” said a voice from behind him. “Talking to yourself? That’s a sure sign of-”
Noel flung up his hand without bothering to look over his shoulder. “Don’t say it!”
“-a worn head chip,” said the voice cheerfully.
Noel sighed in mock exasperation and swung around to confront his best friend. “Only you could get away with old jokes this early in the morning.”
Trojan Heitz, a burly giant with a head of frizzy red hair and a full beard, grinned broadly. Like Noel, he was dressed in conservative street clothes: trousers and a high-throated jacket in soft blue knit. His security badge provided the only ornamentation.
As always, Trojan looked sloppy and unkempt in modern clothing. The tailoring line was wrong for him. But put him in a Tartan kilt, wide leather belt with an axe or short sword hanging from it, and sandals laced to his hairy knees, and his rugged, muscular build looked absolutely right.
“You’re bleeding,” he said. “Or is that something I’m not supposed to notice?”
“It’s nothing,” said Noel quickly. Dabbing again at the cut, he looked at his bloodstained fingers. “The bleeding’s slowed down. I’ll swing by the infirmary later.”
“In the meantime you’re dripping on the floor.”
Noel glanced down, but there weren’t any splatters of crimson on the white, polished floor.
Trojan chuckled.
“Very funny,” said Noel.
They started down the hall together.
“You’re seriously late,” Trojan said. “Want coffee?”
Noel swore to himself. “I missed the whole meeting?”
“Every last word.” Trojan sipped from his cup. “Rugle was at her boring best. Practically recited the whole time traveler’s creed to us. Gave us a list of admonitions and a pep talk that put Bruthe to sleep. Treated us like raw recruits.” Trojan snorted. “As though we’d forget anything in seven months. The only exciting part of the meeting was the fact that old Tchielskov didn’t show. He hasn’t missed a meeting in ten years.”
Noel stood frozen, not listening to Trojan, aware instead of his heart thumping loud and hard against his rib cage. “How many assignments?”
Trojan sniffed the bottom of his cup as though it had something growing in it. “Promised us eight at the last meeting.”
“I know that.” Noel could have throttled him. He knew Trojan was enjoying this. But if he didn’t go along with the baiting, Trojan wouldn’t tell him anything. “We already figured out that the whole advanced team wouldn’t travel this time.”
“Yep.” Trojan’s gaze came up slowly to meet Noel’s. His blue eyes twinkled. “Four assignments.”
“Half! Only half? They are being cautious.”
“Can’t overload the time stream-”
“Bunk!” said Noel forcefully. He saw an official coming toward them and shifted to one side of the corridor to keep his bloody face averted. “The new LOCs are supposed to handle that little-”
“Gossiping in corridors?” said the official snidely. “What’s your rank and grade?”
Officials were always poking their noses about, trying to pretend that they understood a fraction of the research being conducted within the Time Institute, and feeling justified in checking on how they spent taxpayers’ money.
Noel had little use for officials. Trying to mask his attitude, however, he faced the woman and replied, “Security grade two. Rank, historian.”
“Same,” said Trojan.
“Oh,” said the official with a blink. “You’re travelers.”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” she said, impressed but trying not to show it. “Uh, why are you bleeding? Were you in this morning’s riots?”
“Momentarily,” said Noel. He caught Trojan’s eye on him and scowled. “I missed the last shuttle flight over Lake Michigan and had to take-”
“Never mind,” said Trojan. “I can imagine the sordid details. You saw a defenseless woman and child struggling against anarchists and you just had to step in.”
“Well-”
Trojan held up his hand. “Such modesty. No doubt when you pulled her to safety, the child clinging to your shoulder, she sobbed out her gratitude on her knees while the child lifted your credit card. Am I right?”
Noel couldn’t meet his eyes. “You’re right.”
“Disgraceful,” said the official. “But how typical of the lower orders. Well, carry on.”
She walked on toward the security lock. Noel glared after her, making faces until Trojan’s massive hand closed on his shoulder and pushed him in the opposite direction.
“Don’t say it,” he warned Noel. “Don’t say anything.”
As soon as the official stepped into the lock, out of hearing, Noel hooted loudly. “Did you hear her? Carry on. As though she has any idea of what we’re trying to do here. She even believed I met a kid pickpocket this morning. You could tell her anything about the so-called oppressed rabble, and she’d believe it. I’ll bet she’s never seen anyone below a grade three rank. These official parasites are-”
“Be serious,” said Trojan in rebuke. “Did you play the knight errant?”
Noel snorted. “Not my period of history. You’re the chivalrous one, remember? It was just a basic traffic riot, started by some anarchist punks for general reasons. I caught a piece of brick in the face.”
“Oh, very heroic,” said Trojan.
Noel put his hand over his heart and bowed sardonically. That started his cut bleeding again. He swore.
“Blame yourself for it,” said Trojan. “If you must live on the wrong side of town-”
“Drop it,” said Noel. “We’re not all independently wealthy like you and the parasite.”
Trojan frowned. “Don’t call her that. She’s a new representative. Came in for the meeting. And she’s pro-Institute, which is more than can be said for the last one who came by.”
“Who, the anarchist?”
“Don’t say that,” said Trojan, glancing overhead. “Your mouth is going to get you chopped one day.”
“I tried to call in,” said Noel. “Did you know that the comm booths at the shuttle terminal no longer reach this section of Chicago? Overloaded lines. I ask you, how long can this-”
“Blood pressure,” said Trojan. His blue eyes grew dim and stared into the distance. It was his way of tuning out, and it warned Noel to control his temper.
“Hell,” he muttered. “You’re right. It’s just that I want this assignment. I can’t stand modern life. It’s ruining my nerves.”
Trojan’s chuckle was a rumble deep in his throat. “We all know that. Here’s the infirmary corridor. Why don’t you get that cut fixed?”
“No time-”
“There’s time.” Trojan clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. “After all, you don’t want to be scratched from your new assignment just because you flunked your physical.”
Noel stared at him a moment, drinking in his words, letting the knowledge, the relief, the triumph sink deep into his brain. Then he gripped Trojan’s arms and let out a muffled whoop.
“Really? You too?”
Trojan nodded, his grin spreading from ear to ear. Gripping each other, they began an impromptu jig in the middle of the corridor. A couple of smocked scientists stepped around them, disinterested, and used to the aberrations of historians. Down the hall, a door opened and a gray-haired woman with a face like a mountain crag looked out.
“Heitz! Kedran! Stop making that noise and report to your stations at once. Kedran, if you bleed on the floor I’ll have you mop this entire area.”
They stopped dancing at once and stood shoulder to shoulder at attention, like schoolboys caught in a misdemeanor.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Trojan.
“Yes, Dr. Rugle,” said Noel.
“One would think, Mr. Kedran,” said Rugle, “that you aren’t interested in traveling after all, since you didn’t bother to attend this morning’s orientation meeting.”
Noel pulled in his chin and tried to keep his dislike of the old harridan off his face. “I’m very interested, Dr. Rugle,” he said. “I got caught in a riot on the way to work.”
“A riot?” She frowned. “Can’t you think of a less mundane excuse? Get to your stations. Tchielskov has decided to take the day off, for some inexplicable reason, leaving us short of prep technicians. Processing is going to take at least two hours longer than usual. Your cooperation will help that procedure go more smoothly. Thank you.”
She vanished, her door closing. Noel and Trojan passed her office in silence, not daring to meet each other’s gaze. As soon as they turned the corner and entered the archives section, they glanced at each other and snickered.
“What an old bag,” said Noel. “Our cooperation will assist the procedure of processing to proceed in an ongoing direction. I’m glad I did miss the meeting.”
Trojan veered off to a coffee machine and got another cup. “Want some?”
“No. You know I hate the stuff.” Noel eyed him critically. “At the rate you’re swilling it-”
“Coffee drinking didn’t come into practice in Europe until the late eighteenth century,” said Trojan, slurping. “No coffee where I’m going.”
“You mean when you’re going.”
“That too.” Finishing his cup, Trojan refilled it again.
“You’re getting Agincourt,” said Noel, unable to hold off asking any longer. “The first modern battle in Europe. One of the finest examples of courage and achievement against impossible odds. Well? If you know we both got assignments, you must know what they are. Tell me!”
Trojan chuckled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Did you get Agincourt?”
“You know I wanted Malta.”
“That’s just because you like the Mediterranean climate. Tell!”
Trojan let out a mighty sigh. “Yes, I got Agincourt.”
Noel grinned, his expectations wired tight. “And? Oh, hell, Troj, stop playing this out.”
“You got Constantinople.”
Excitement burst in Noel. He threw his arms in the air like a marathon winner and crowed.
Three people instantly appeared in the lobby of the archives: the librarian and two other historians.
The librarian shook his head indulgently and retreated without a reprimand. One historian grinned and shook Noel’s and Trojan’s hands. The other scowled.
Noel made himself sober quickly, although the excitement beating inside him was stronger than his own heartbeat. “Sorry, Rupeet. No go for you?”
Rupeet’s dark face scowled harder. He made no reply. His tall, fair-haired companion, however, shot Noel a rueful smile.
“Nor for me, I’m afraid,” he said in a soft, singsong voice. “We’re to wait until your lot returns.”
“We’ll only be gone about an hour, this time,” said Noel.
“Slack,” said Rupeet angrily. “Slack thinker. Slack planner. Slack in everything you do. You’re never properly prepared. You don’t read the manuals. You even missed this morning’s meeting-”
“Easy, Rupeet,” said Trojan.
“Damn it all! It’s forty-nine minutes,” said Rupeet. “Not sixty.”
Noel shrugged. “So?”
“You see? You see? It’s a crucial variation in the time streams. With the previous model LOCs we had only a thirty-six-minute return lap. It’s significant, Kedran. If you ever did half your job, you’d know that.”
Noel’s temper, ever quick to fly, was barely held in check. His eyes narrowed. “I know it indicates we can stay in the time stream longer with fewer adverse effects. I know it indicates a forty-nine to one ratio, with forty-nine of their minutes equal to one of ours. That gives us roughly two days in past time-”
“Exactly 1.667 days. More than enough time for you to make a mistake that could seriously alter-”
“Oh, give it up, Rupeet,” said Noel rudely and walked away.
Trojan fell into step with him. “You’re making an enemy there.”,
Noel shrugged.
“Office politics are sticky. It’s not wise to have enemies within the Institute. We have enough outside it.”
“I hate politics,” said Noel irritably. “We each have our jobs to do. There’s no competition. Why should he care who goes first?”
“Why did you?”
Noel glared at him, but Trojan was staring into the bottom of his cup.
After a moment Noel sighed. “Yeah, okay. You made your point. But Rupeet doesn’t love the past. He doesn’t have a feel for it, an understanding of its richness, of its texture. He doesn’t see the interweaving of the time streams as a poetry of the universe. He-”
Trojan’s quizzical look made Noel realize he was getting carried away. His face flamed hot and he cleared his throat.
“Uh, well, he just plods through and makes his recordings. We might as well send a pack mule on his assignments, for all the joy they bring him. He sees each assignment as another step to his promotion into the administration. It’s like a profanity. The whole experience is wasted on him.”
“It’s just fun for me,” said Trojan mildly, finishing his coffee and tossing away the cup. “When it stops being fun, I shall stop traveling. You always want to turn it into a religious experience-”
“Cute, Troj. Very cute.”
“Poetry of the universe,” said Trojan and snorted. “That wallop you took this morning must have addled your brain. Come on.”
Four hours later Noel strapped on his LOC, feeling it turn warm and settle around his wrist like an old friend. He walked through the sterile Laboratory 14, now filled with row after row of technicians, each sitting at a terminal, each linked into the data-retrieval-run system mat supported the massive time computer.
He wore a knee-length tunic of thin, natural-colored wool and a cloak of bright blue. The leather belt around his lean waist held a dagger and a heavy purse of coins bearing the imperial seal of Rome. He kept muttering Latin phrases to himself, testing the heavy syllables on his tongue to regain the natural rhythm of the language. Although he was implanted with a universal translator, he liked to be able to think in the old tongues.
At the last minute before they parted, Trojan had pressed a small pouch into his hand. “Salt,” he said. “For luck… and good eating.”
The worst thing about the past was the food. No matter how much they trained, none of the historians could acquire a taste for the bland, boiled, slightly gamey muck that passed for stews and pottages.
Noel had forgotten to provide himself with a supply of salt. Gratefully he took the pouch and gave Trojan a quick hug.
“Thanks, friend,” he said. “Watch out for arrows.”
“I’ll be on the English side of the battle,” said Trojan in mock exasperation. “The French didn’t use the longbow then, remember? Really, Noel, you are pretty ignorant for a historian.”
“Focused,” retorted Noel. “Specialized. Not ignorant.”
“Ignorant,” said Trojan, but with gentleness. “Fly by the seat of your pants.”
“Intuitive,” retorted Noel. “You should play your hunches more and depend on your experience less.”
“Don’t catch the pox,” said Trojan.
They grinned at each other.
“Get on with it,” muttered the technician Bruthe.
They always had this little ritual of swapping insults and advice before they traveled. Stepping back, Noel watched his friend enter the portal.
It was like watching a man walk away from you down a long hallway into the mist, becoming increasingly indistinct until the mist curled across his shadow and he was gone. The first time Noel had ever seen the time portal, he had been disappointed at the tameness of the effect. He had wanted to see lightning flash, or hear great cracks of thunder as time was rent to let them enter its stream. But no dazzling pyrotechnics happened in time travel. Only the mist and a gentle sense of being sucked away into a fuzzy nothingness that lasted a few short seconds before arrival.
“Your turn, Kedran,” said Bruthe.
Normally Tchielskov performed the portal duties. Noel was fond of the old man, who had taught him how to avoid the slight nausea that crossing the portal could cause, who had taught him to go in thinking in the language he was to shortly be surrounded by so that the actual transition was less of a shock. He had never known the old man to miss travel, but Bruthe-or anyone else in the room-could handle the portal controls. It was just a matter of monitoring; the time computer did all the real work.
Adrenaline built in Noel’s veins. The center of his palms grew moist. He sucked in a deep breath and entered the portal ramp, bouncing just once on his toes and making sure he started on his left foot. It was a mindless, meaningless superstition of his, a way to distract himself as he entered the mist.
Although it appeared to be mist to those watching in the laboratory behind him, in reality it wasn’t a ground cloud of moisture at all. In reality, it was nonreality. Tendrils of gray nothingness dissolved his tangible surroundings. The deeper he walked into it, the more he dissolved. He kept his gaze ahead, knowing better than to watch himself fade.
A frisson of energy rippled through him, making his black hair stand on end. He could hear the pulse of the time wave, and felt it washing over him in an immense, sucking tide.
Normally about now he should be nothing more visible than a vague outline. He was crossing the actual portal, the most dangerous moment of travel, when he was in neither dimension but only between.
His LOC was getting warmer, too warm, uncomfortably hot on his arm. The pain of it grew sharp, piercing enough to make him gasp, although by now he shouldn’t be feeling any physical sensations.
He should be through by now. But instead of clearing, the misty grayness around him grew suddenly black, as though he’d been dropped down a hole. He had the dizzying, terrifying sensation of falling.
This had never happened before. For an instant he panicked, then he clung desperately to his training and tried to project his mind back to the laboratory. With fear curling around the edges of his thoughts, warping his ability to control himself, he envisioned the lab with its whiteness, its rows of terminals, the hush of the air, the men and women going about their jobs, faces.
He was still falling. The pain in his arm had spread to his chest. He felt as though he were being halved by a saw, slicing its way in steady strokes through the center of him. He wanted to scream, and couldn’t.
What was happening? Why couldn’t he go back?
No hearing, no sight, no feeling of anything solid around him. Complete sensory shut down. He shuddered, feeling the panic blank him again.
He sought to rebuild the lab in his mind, but he was too scared. It wasn’t working. All those drills, all that training to equip him to deal with any difficulty in traveling… nothing worked.
In desperation, he focused on an image of Tchielskov’s face, making it real to him, pretending he could hear the old man’s patient voice talking him through this, talking him back.
What was this? wondered Noel frantically. Time loop? Vortex? Aberration? Anomaly? This close to the portal, it should have registered on the monitors. Hadn’t Bruthe been paying attention? Was it sabotage?
The pain intensified, and there was only the inside of his own skull to scream in. He stopped falling and felt himself jolted, then bumped through a series of ripples like being caught in the wake of a ferry upon Lake Michigan.
He heard a voice. Hope swelled through him. He called out, certain now that he was being pulled back. The voice echoed to him, not heard exactly, but somehow sensed within his mind. He could not understand its words. Everything was gibberish, like listening to a recording played backward. He shouted in response, but it gibbered on for a while, then stopped.
The silence was even worse.
He felt as though he were spinning, end over end, eddying down, looping nowhere, like a child’s kite falling when the string is severed.
How long? he wondered.
Infinity perhaps, whispered a corner of his mind.
This then was death. And there was no end to it, no place of beginning, no point of reference. This was to be nothing, yet aware.
This was hell.
And damnation.
He had never believed in such things before. Now, sobbing in his own fear and the agony that ripped him into pieces, he was forced to believe. He had never considered death beyond a casual ending, preferably in action, hopefully quick. How little he had known, or even guessed.
He would be the first traveler to die in the time streams. They would give him a memorial service. They might even close the Institute for a day, although he doubted it. Trojan would grieve for him, if Trojan himself was not dead too. The project would probably be closed.
Bring me back! he shouted with all his might, straining until he felt something nearly snap within him.
There came a jolt, hard and tangible, as though he had struck something. Energy waved through him, scraping his nerve endings. He felt a rush of wind, and then he heard a churning babble of noise, a din that grew into a crescendo of mindless, deafening, horrible cacophony. Grayness spread before him in an arc, changing to a rainbow of colors too vivid to bear. They seared into him with their brightness. If he had eyes, he tried to shut them, but it did not keep away the colors that branded themselves upon his brain. Images hurled themselves at him, shapes without meaning, alien, confusing.
He heard a crack of sound as though the universe itself had broken apart. It spread out into deafening, numbing thunder that crashed and grumbled forever, echoing in upon itself before finally fading away.
Noel hit the ground with a thump. He had no warning-no return of vision, no smells, no sense at all that he was back in corporeal existence-until he landed. It knocked the breath from him, and at first he could but lie there limp and dazed, unable to comprehend his surroundings.
Lightning ripped the sky overhead, and with a start he came fully conscious, finding himself in the darkness of night with a rainstorm lashing about him, wind howling in his ears, thunder crashing overhead, lightning flashes illuminating a stark, unknown world of boulder and crag. He was cold, drenched to the skin, and the earth beneath him was shaking.
Noel looked up, half scrambling to his feet on instinct more than anything else. Out of the night came a group of horsemen, on top of him before he really saw them. Crying out, Noel threw himself to one side and rolled frantically to avoid the galloping slash of hooves.
One struck him a glancing blow anyway, and the pain was like a shock, numbing him all over again. More horsemen were coming, with yells that rent the night in furious counterpoint to the storm. Noel dodged and scrambled among the riders who were oblivious to his existence. Flashes of lightning in strobe action played upon upraised swords and metal helmets. The sounds of thunder, screaming horses, yelling men, and metal clanging upon metal were deafening.
Rain lashed into his eyes, half blinding him. He had one split-second glimpse of a horse coming at him before it knocked him aside with its chest, hooves digging, nostrils distended, white gleaming around its eye. Sheer instinct made Noel grab the reins to save himself from being trampled. The horse’s impetus slung him around hard enough to wrench his shoulders. He cried out and let go, stumbling to keep his balance. The rider swung at him with his sword.
Noel could not dodge it, and only luck and perhaps the darkness put the flat of the sword to him instead of the edge. Still, being struck by a yard long piece of iron packed a wallop that tumbled him down the slope.
Winded and gasping for air from his flattened lungs, he felt a sickening drop beneath him.
Fear came back, like hot bile in his throat, and he thought he had slipped back into the time stream. But it was only a short fall before he thudded onto solid ground again, and went rolling down the hillside with too much impetus to stop himself, lost in the darkness and the rain and the howling night while the battle raged on in a thunder of hooves, swords, and jingling harness, oblivious to his existence.
His shoulder hit something solid, like a boulder, and he slewed sideways, his wild progress slowed. He slid on his back several more feet down, scooping ice-cold mud down the neck of his tunic. He had time to realize that he wasn’t in Constantinople. He wasn’t in a city at all.
That realization brought a new brand of fear all its own. Then his head bumped against a stone, and the stars themselves fell upon him. He knew nothing more.