The Timekeeper Conspiracy

1

What goes around, comes around, thought Lucas Priest. Life was turning into a series of repetitive experiences. Floating on a cushion of air, the ground shuttle threaded its way across the plaza that formed the center of the giant atrium that was the Departure Station at Pendleton Base. Lucas bummed a smoke from the driver. He rubbed the cigarette against the side of the pack, igniting it, then breathed in a deep lungful of smoke and leaned back against the padded seat. The administration buildings towered overhead, surrounding the plaza on all sides. Skycabs and cargo ferries filled the air above him as they followed the traffic patterns, barely avoiding the numerous pedestrian cross ways that connected the buildings.

They passed groups of soldiers who snapped to attention and saluted as the shuttle went by. Lucas was fairly certain that it wasn't he they were saluting, as much as the staff shuttle. He saw men and women dressed in the silver uniforms of Belt Commandos gathered before banks of vending machines. They were loading up on snacks, cigarettes, and coffee. Soldiers of J.E.B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry conversed in animated tones with Persian Immortals about to clock out to fight under the command of Xerxes. Knights in the armor of Crusaders sat cross-legged on the floor by their equipment, a position that would have been impossible for them had not their armor been constructed out of flexible nysteel, an advantage the real Crusaders never had. He saw Spartans in bronze chest armor and red cloaks playing cards with the black-garbed members of a German Panzer unit. A mixed group of British redcoats, World War I doughboys, and Japanese samurai compared war stories as they passed a bottle back and forth and listened to the computer-generated voice announcing departure codes and grid designations over the public address system. One Departure Station looked much like any other and the ride across the plaza reminded Lucas of Quantico, where it all began.

Things had been different then. He hadn't known what to expect. He had quit his job at Westerly Antiagathics to enlist in the Temporal Corps because he had been bored. He had fallen for the recruiter's pitch and he had joined up with grand visions of adventure and romance filling him with delightful anticipation. That first day, that first sight of a Temporal Departure Station, had been much like this. The only difference was that now his heart wasn't pumping at what seemed like twice the normal rate and his breath didn't catch at the sight of soldiers dressed in period, waiting to clock out to their assignments. It was a familiar sight now. He had been here before.

He remembered, with a sense of wry amusement, that the fascination with his new career had been incredibly short-lived. It had worn off on his very first mission, when he had learned for the first time in his life what it meant to be afraid.

He had learned the hard way that the past was nowhere near being as glamorous and romantic as he had supposed. He had gone on forced marches with Scipio's Roman legions. He had gone on mounted raids with Attila and his Huns and he had flown aerial sorties with the "flying circus" of Baron Manfred von Richthofen. He had seen squalor, disease, death, and devastation. He had learned that life in the Temporal Corps was far more violent and primitive than he could ever have imagined. Far more ephemeral, too. He had lived for only one thing then — to beat the odds and to survive, to complete his tour of duty and get out. He had, but along the way, something inside of him had changed.

He had returned to civilian life, to a laboratory job where he worked in pleasant, sterile, safe surroundings. Nothing had changed. At least, it had seemed so at first. On the surface, it felt as though he had never left, as though his experiences in the service had been a part of some particularly vivid dream. Yet, it was a dream that wouldn't quite let go. Like the disorientating traces of a nightmare that linger on into the morning, the memories of bygone battles clung to him, leaving their mark. It had not taken him long to discover a hard truth about the soldiers of the time wars. They leave pieces of themselves scattered throughout all of time. They can't go home again.

He had fallen victim to the restlessness, the boredom, the feeling out of place. He had continued fighting deep inside, even though the battles had been left behind. He had become a dog of war, unsuited to a life of domesticity.

He felt uncomfortable with the way civilians reacted when they learned that he was a veteran of the time wars. They wanted to know what it was like, but somehow, he couldn't tell them. He would try, but the answers he gave were never those which they expected. What he tried to tell them, they didn't really want to hear. He was not a soldier anymore, but they were still civilians.

The decision to re-enlist had not been an easy one to make. It had been like standing on a very high diving board over a pool filled with ice cold water. It was difficult to summon up the courage to dive in, but once he had committed himself, all the tension simply went away. Things had come full circle, only now it felt a little different.

It all felt pleasingly familiar. He had always thought that he hated army life and it came as something of a shock to him when he discovered just how comfortable it felt to be back in.

He had re-enlisted with the rank of captain. The promotion had come as a result of his last assignment, an historical adjustment in 12th-century England. When it was all over, he had vowed that he would never go through anything like that again.

An adjustment was nothing like a standard mission. It wasn't like being infiltrated into the ranks of soldiers of the past, fighting side by side with them to help determine the outcome of a war being fought on paper in the 27th century. In an adjustment, temporal continuity had been disturbed. What Dr. Albrecht Mensinger had referred to as a "ripple" had been set into motion and there was a threat of serious temporal contamination. The timeflow was endangered and the timestream could be split. That, the greatest of all possible temporal disasters, had to be prevented at all costs.

The timestream split, Mensinger's solution to the grandfather paradox, had been the focus of the Temporal SALT talks of 2515, when the treaty that governed the fighting of the time wars had been hammered out and all power given to the extranational Referee Corps, who acted as the managers and final arbiters of all temporal conflicts.

The past was absolute. It had happened, it had been experienced, it could not be changed. Prior to the treaty, it had been believed that the inertia of the timeflow would prevent all but the most limited and insignificant temporal disruptions. Dr. Mensinger had proved otherwise, using the grandfather paradox for his model.

The riddle posed the question of what would happen if a man were to travel back into the past, to a point in time before his grandfather procreated a son. If that time traveler then killed his own grandfather, then his father would not be born, which meant that he would not be born. Hence, the grandfather paradox. If the time traveler had never been born, then how could he have traveled back through time to kill his grandfather?

Mensinger had shown how the inertia of the timeflow would compensate for such a paradox. At the instant of the grandfather's demise, the timestream would be split, creating two timelines running parallel to one another. In one timeline, the absolute past of the time traveler would be preserved. In the other, his action would be taken into account. Since there had to be an absolute past for the time traveler in which he had not yet interfered with the continuity of time, he would find himself in that second timeline, which he had created by his action.

The split would result in a universal duplication of matter. Everything that had existed in the past, prior to the split, would now exist in that second timeline, as well. Events in that timeline would proceed, affected by the action taken by the time traveler. Mensinger had stated that it might be possible to deal with a split timestream by sending someone back into the past to a point in time prior to the split. Then, theoretically, the time traveler could be prevented from murdering his grandfather. However, in the event of such a split, the split would have had to have occurred before it could be prevented from occurring. Anyone going back in time to prevent the time traveler from murdering his grandfather could be coming from a future in which that grandfather had already been murdered by his grandson.

Mensinger had discovered, to his chagrin, that split timelines would eventually rejoin. If the timelines had already rejoined at the point that those going back into the past to prevent the murder of the grandfather departed, then their actions in preventing the split would not, in fact, be preventative. Rather, they would be in the nature of changing something which had already occurred before it occurred. This raised the possibility of yet another split. If not, then it meant the eradication of an entire timeline, which raised equally frightening possibilities. It would mean the genocide of everyone who existed in that timeline created by the murder of the grandfather. Not only would this be mass murder on an unimaginable scale, it would also mean dire consequences for the future, the events of which could have been dictated by actions taken in that second timeline.

Mensinger had been awarded the coveted Benford Prize for his research, but he had frightened himself so badly that he had discontinued his experiments. He had called for an immediate cessation of temporal warfare and for the strictest monitoring of time travel. He claimed that the dubious advantages of waging war within the conflicts of the past in order to spare the present from the grim realities of warfare were far outweighed by the dangers inherent in the system. No one had disagreed with him, yet the time wars continued. In order for temporal warfare to become a thing of the past, someone would have to stop it first. And not one nation had been willing to refrain from time travel out of fear that other nations would continue the practice, using time as a weapon against them.

The adjustment to which Lucas Priest had been assigned had represented the closest potential for a timestream split in the history of the time wars. The mission had been successfully completed and the continuity of time had been preserved, but it had cost the lives of half of Priest's unit. Only Lucas Priest and Finn Delaney had returned alive, and not even they would have survived had it not been for the intervention of a Temporal Corps deserter by the name of Reese Hunter.

Lucas had often thought about Reese Hunter since then. Until he had met Hunter, he had not been aware of the existence of a temporal underground, a loosely organized network of deserters from the Temporal Corps. These were men and women whose cerebral implants had either been damaged or removed, so that they could not be traced. Most of them had chosen to defect to the time periods in which they had deserted, but a few, like Hunter, possessed stolen chrono-plates whose tracer functions had been bypassed. These people had achieved the ultimate in freedom. All of time was at their beck and call.

There was but one limitation placed upon the existence of the members of the underground. A split or even a minor disruption in the timeflow could affect their very existence, so in that respect, even though they were deserters, they were still bound by the General Orders that defined what actions a soldier of the Temporal Corps could take in Minus Time.

Lucas often wondered how many people in the past were actually people from the future. It was frightening to realize just how delicate and fragile the timestream had become. If the ordinary citizen had any idea how precarious the balance was and how easily it could be tipped, he would become a raving paranoid. It was within this system that Lucas had to function. It was to this system that he had returned, by choice.

It made him wonder about his own stability. It also made him wonder if there had really been a choice for him at all.

They had, predictably, assigned him to the Time Commandos as a result of that last mission. His commission was in Major Forrester's First Division, an elite unit assembled for the express purpose of dealing with threats to temporal continuity. Being an officer in the First Division entitled him to certain perks, such as free transportation anywhere in Plus Time and luxurious billeting in the bachelor officer's quarters at TAC-HQ. But hand in hand with special privileges went special risks. Though he was in a higher pay scale now, the odds of his not living to collect his pay had gone up correspondingly. Standard missions had scared him half to death before and now his assignments would almost certainly all be adjustments. It was a far more lethal proposition now.

"So how come I'm not shaking like a leaf?" Lucas mumbled.

"Sir?" The driver turned around briefly.

"Nothing, Corporal. Just thinking out loud." Lucas finished his cigarette and threw the butt away. Leaning back against the seat again, he sighed and closed his eyes. Oh, well, he thought, at least I won't be bored.

The shuttle dropped him off in front of the headquarters building of the Temporal Army Command. As he rode the lift tube up to TAC-HQ, he watched the bustle of activity in the plaza far below. He carried no luggage, nothing in the way of personal possessions. The few material possessions he had accumulated during his brief return to civilian life had all been left behind in his conapt, a bequest to some future tenant. From now on, his life would once again consist of necessities picked up in the PX, issued field kits, and following orders. Paradoxically, he felt marvelously free.

It felt strange to be saluted in the corridors. As a noncom, Lucas had never insisted on military protocol, or as most soldiers called it, "mickey mouse." It was an age-old expression and no one seemed to know where it had come from. Lucas had once queried the data banks on it, only to discover that the information was classified.

The First Division lounge was a small bar and it was almost empty, so Lucas spotted Delaney at once. He was sitting all alone at a table by a window, hunched over his drink. He had lost some weight and the thick red hair had been shaved, but as Lucas approached the table, he saw that at least one thing hadn't changed. Delaney still could not hold onto a promotion.

"Well, that commission didn't last long, did it?" Lucas said, eying Finn's armband, emblazoned with the single chevron of a Pfc.

"Priest! Good God!"

Lucas grinned. "That's Captain Priest to you, Mister."

Delaney got to his feet and they shook hands warmly, then hugged, clapping each other on the back. Finn held him at arm's length, his beefy hands squeezing Lucas's biceps.

"You look good, kid," he said. "But I thought you'd mustered out."

"I did. I re-enlisted."

"Whatever happened to that burning desire for the easy civilian life?" said Finn.

Lucas shrugged. "It burned out, I guess."

Finn chuckled. "I might've known you'd screw up on the outside."

"At least I've managed to hang onto my bars," said Lucas, glancing at the silver insignia on his armband. "You seem to have misplaced yours."

"Hell, you may be an officer now," said Finn, "but you'll always be a grunt at heart. That's how it is when you come up the hard way. I'm damned glad to see you, Lucas. Welcome back."

"I'm glad to see you, too, Finn. What're you drinking?"

"What else?"

"Irish whiskey? Good, I'm buying. I see you've already got a sizable head start. Look, I'm not due to report in until 0600. If you've got nothing better to do than sit and drink, what say we have a few and then go out on the town?"

Finn grimaced. "I'd love to, kid, but I can't. I'm under house arrest."

"What? What for?"

"Striking a superior officer," said Finn.

"Again? How many times does that make, four?"

"Six," said Finn, wryly. "The ref made a point of reminding me."

"They brought you up before a referee for that!" said Lucas. "Who'd you hit, a general?"

"A light colonel," said Finn.

"I'm almost afraid to ask, but why?"

"Because he was a pompous military asshole, that's why," said Finn. "I had my blouse unbuttoned in the officer's club. And this runt of an administration desk jockey starts chewing me out about it. I told him to fuck off, so he sticks his face about two inches from my nose and starts screaming, spraying me with spit. So I just popped him one."

"And they dragged you up before a referee?"

"Well, no. Not exactly. That happened after the fracas with the M.P. s."

"What fracas?"

"Oh, you know, the standard bullshit. Resisting arrest, direct disobedience to a specific order, striking officers in the performance of their duty, damaging government property, and a few other things that they tacked on that I can't remember."

"Oh."

"Yeah. So I'm confined to quarters until further notice. The old man's been nice enough to give me some slack there, which is why I'm here, but I can't so much as go near the lift tubes. I've been cooling my heels for the better part of a week, waiting for the review board to meet. Been spending most of my time right here in the lounge, trying to drink up my back pay. It's kind of funny, actually. Remember the old days, when we scarcely had a moment to ourselves between assignments? Now that we're here in this 'elite' unit, it's nothing but hurry up and wait."

"You said the ref put you down for a review board," Lucas said. "What was the ref's recommendation?"

Finn grunted. "She was a real hard-assed bitch. Read me the riot act about all the 'previous irregularities' in my record. I think her exact words were, 'Perhaps you'd be better off in a nontemporal unit. Someplace where your flamboyant tendencies won't be quite so much of a disruptive influence.' You know what that means, don't you?"

"The Belt Command?"

"I'll lay you eight to one," said Finn. "If I could get my hands on a plate, so help me, I'd skip out to the underground."

"Not so loud, friend," Lucas said. "Somebody might hear you."

"Who gives a shit? I don't see how I could possibly be in any deeper than I am now."

"You can always get yourself in deeper," Lucas said. "It's the getting out that's not so easy. Maybe something can be done."

"Like what?"

Simon Hawke

The Timekeeper Conspiracy

"I don't know. But at least they haven't reassigned you yet."

Finn scratched his head. "Hell. I had to go and hit that asshole. They've probably fixed his jaw by now and he's back pushing papers, while I'm going to get stuck out in the Asteroid Belt, keeping those crazy miners from killing each other. You know, I might've expected just about anything, but somehow I never thought I'd wind up as a policeman."

He looked out through the giant window that was the outside wall of the First Division lounge. It was dark outside and all the buildings were lit up, bathing the plaza far below in a garish glow. The skycabs threading through the maze of buildings made the night a sea of red and amber running lights. The window shut out all the noise, rendering the scene outside into a silent ballet of light and steel.

"Doesn't look real somehow, does it?" Finn said as he continued gazing out the window. "I really hate it here, you know that? I was born into this time and yet I don't belong to it."

Lucas smiled. "You're a romantic, Finn."

Finn snorted. "I'm a soldier, kid, that's all."

"Look, nothing's settled yet, right? The board still makes the final disposition."

"When's the last time you heard of a review board going against a ref's recommendation?" Finn said.

"There's always a first time."

"Don't hold your breath."

"Well, if they send you out to the Belt, I'll go along and keep you company. I can put in for a transfer."

"Don't be an ass."

"Why not? How bad can it be? The duty's less hazardous and it would sure beat hell out of the lab job I left behind to re-enlist. Besides, we go back a long way together. All the way to 1194, to be exact."

Finn smiled, recalling the adjustment in 12th-century England. He nodded. "Yeah, that was a hell of a mission, wasn't it? We almost didn't make it back."

"We did make it back, though," Lucas said. "And we were in a worse fix than you're in now."

"Maybe. Hooker never made it back, though. And Johnson bought it, too." He tossed back his whiskey. "Hell, I must be getting old. I'm turning into a maudlin drunk."

Lucas pushed back his chair and stood up. Finn glanced at him, then turned to see Major Forrester approaching their table. He wasn't required to stand to attention in the presence of a superior officer in the lounge, but he made a determined effort, anyway. He was slightly more than halfway out of his chair when Forrester said, "At ease, gentlemen. As you were."

Lucas sat back down.

"Sorry, sir," said Finn. "I gave it my best shot, but I can't seem to feel my legs too good."

"I've got half a mind to cut 'em off for you, Delaney," Forrester said.

The old man hadn't changed. Antiagathic drugs made it difficult to accurately guess a person's age, but Forrester looked as old as Methuselah. Even his wrinkles had wrinkles. Yet Forrester stood ramrod straight and he was in better shape than most men under his command who were one-sixth his age. He had been their training officer in the field and Lucas knew only too well just how "old" the old man really was. He glanced at Lucas.

"You just get in, Priest?"

"Only just, sir. I was going to report to you in the morning."

Forrester nodded. "I knew you'd be back. There's nothing on the outside for a soldier." He sat down and ordered a drink. Both Finn and Lucas were glad that they had already started on their Irish whiskey. It meant that they had an excuse not to join the old man in his favorite libation. For some unfathomable reason, Forrester had picked up a taste for Red Eye. Of all the swill that he had downed during his temporal travels, Lucas hated that old west rotgut the most. Those oldtime gunfighters either had iron constitutions or a death-wish. The stuff could make a man go blind.

"I hope you haven't gone soft on me, Priest," said Forrester. "I just got a hot one dumped into my lap and I need to put a team together in a hurry, so I hope you haven't lost your edge."

"I'm ready, sir," said Lucas. "But what about Delaney? He's filled me in on the situation and if you don't mind my saying so, sending someone with his experience to the Belt would be a waste."

"Thanks, kid," said Delaney, "but you don't have to — "

"I agree with you," said Forrester. Finn's eyes widened in surprise. "He's insubordinate, but he's a hell of a good soldier."

"Thank you, sir," said Finn, taken aback by the compliment.

"Don't thank me, Mister. I'm just stating a simple fact. You're a good man in the field, but when you're between assignments, you've got the emotional stability of a ten-year-old. I'm all too well acquainted with your record. Well, you're under my command now and I'll only tolerate so much before I lose my temper. You've got a yardbird's temperament, Delaney, and if you get back from this mission, I'll beat it out of you if I have to."

Finn stared at him." You mean — ''

"I mean you've got a temporary reprieve," said Forrester. "You two have pulled off tough ones in the past. I don't like to break up a good team. You'll still have to get past that review board, assuming you'll make it back, but I've been talking to the officers who will be sitting on that board and I've been given to understand that if you do well on this one, they'll take that fact into consideration. So it's up to you to pull your own fat out of the fire. But if you screw up on me again, I'll personally drag your ass down to a plate and clock you out to the Paleolithic Age. You should fit right in. You'll be able to brawl to heart's content with all the other Neanderthals."

"You've made your point, sir," said Delaney. "And thanks."

"Just get the job done, Delaney. That'll be thanks enough for me."

"Any idea what it is, sir?" Lucas said.

"None whatsoever," Forrester said. "But this one's got full priority. I can't say that I like the arrangements, though. You'll be loaned out to the agency for this one."

"The TIA?" said Lucas. "That's a bit unusual, isn't it, sir? They don't normally use outsiders."

"No, they don't," said Forrester. "That's why I know that it's a hot one. If Temporal Intelligence figures they need help, it's got to be a bad one."

"I'm not crazy about working under some spook," said Finn. "Those guys are a bunch of psychos, if you ask me."

"I didn't ask you," said Forrester. "And for your information, you've got those psychos to thank for saving your bacon. They specifically requested the team that pulled off the 1194 adjustment. Or what's left of it, anyway. And that's you two."

"I suppose we should be flattered," Finn said. He raised his glass and toasted Lucas. "Welcome back to active duty, kid. Looks like you've got perfect timing."

"While we're on that subject," Forrester said, "I wouldn't make it a late one if I were you. The mission briefing is at 0700, so get some rest. You're clocking out tomorrow." He pushed his chair back and stood up. "Enjoy your drinks, gentlemen."

Lucas grimaced. "Hey, Finn," he said, "what was that you said about 'hurry up and wait'?"

Delaney poured himself another shot. "I don't know," he said. "What was it you said about 'You can always get in deeper'?"

Lucas tilted his glass toward Finn. "Cheers."

Finn raised his own glass. "Confusion to the French."