Storm at the Edge of Time (15 page)

Scarcely noticing the building's occupants, Tyaak walked to a squat orange column, pressed some controls, and removed three long bars that shot into a tray. He handed Arni a gray one, gave a tan one to Jamie, and kept a black one for himself.

“Yours should taste like fish,” he told Arni. “You do eat a lot of fish?”

“Not shaped like this.” But the boy took a bite and then another. Jamie nibbled hers. It tasted nutty, and she decided not to ask for details.

Tyaak led them to the elevators. One slid open to let out two Humans. The three children stepped in and were joined by a female Kreeth whose hair seemed to fill up the remaining space. When she got out at one of the lower floors, the other three kept going up.

Tyaak had been riding with his eyes closed, but suddenly they popped open. “I think we just passed it.” He touched the controls. Jamie couldn't sense any movement as she could in her time's elevators, but a light scale beside the door dropped again.

“No, passed it again,” Tyaak said hitting the controls once more. “Here.” The door slid silently open. They stepped into a wide space dotted with statues and display cases.

“What is this?” Jamie asked. “A museum?”

Tyaak shook his head. “Some of the lower floors are marked as museums.” He pointed to a multilingual placard above what looked like a reception desk. “Archaeological Research Laboratory: Northern Europe.”

“So, you think the staff's here?” Arni asked while peering into a case of squashed-looking reed baskets and sandals.

“What do you say?” Tyaak asked in return.

Arni frowned. “Not quite right. The height is, but there aren't enough old things around, or not the right old things.”

Jamie could picture the staff now without even closing her eyes. She just willed herself to see it, and the picture snapped into focus in front of her. A moon-pale horse, carved as if leaping from the wood. It lay on blue-gray metal, shiny and cold. Dark green hands passed some instrument over it. A Human-looking pair of hands clamped wires onto the shaft. Then, briefly, another hand—a pale green hand pointing at something—fluttered into the picture.

Jamie blinked and looked at her companions. “There's a Human, a Kreeth, and that celery person doing things to it.”

“Where?” Arni asked.

Jamie only shook her head, but Tyaak said, “Through there, I think.” He nodded to a door beside the reception desk marked “Authorized Personnel Only.”

“So, let's go,” Arni said, heading for the door.

“No!” Jamie said. She realized suddenly that most eleventh-century Vikings couldn't read their own language, let alone the ones in which this sign was written.

“They'll stop us if we try to go in there.”

The boy smiled. “Then we'll sneak by while they're looking at something else.”

“What?”

“One of us could tip over that ugly statue. It should make a good crash.”

“Yeah, and land one of us in jail, too,” Jamie objected.

“Not if we do it from a distance,” Tyaak said quietly. Jamie shot him a questioning look.

“Well, this … this power, this thing you insist on calling magic, does seem to work.”

Jamie frowned. “But everything we've been doing with it is sort of passive. Seeing or sensing things.”

“What about what you and Arni did?”

“But that was using a staff,” she said sharply. “We're on our own here.”

Arni stopped staring at a pair of blue gangly people and joined the conversation. “Tyaak's right. If we are born sorcerers, we have magic
in
us. It's part of us. We should be able to make things happen with or without the staff.”

Jamie felt cold inside. It had been the same all along. Arni was unafraid of magic because he totally believed in it, and Tyaak was unafraid because he believed that, if magic existed at all, it was just some other form of science. But she had only half believed. The half that still resisted, she admitted now, had glimpsed magic long ago and turned away in dread.

But the time had come to look again.

“Right,” she forced herself to say. “Let's magic that great ugly statue right off its pedestal.”

The three walked casually across the lounge, pretending to look at exhibits. A Human and a smaller version of the hippopotamus lady were examining something in one case. A gangly blue person, a Human, and a Kreeth with particularly spry hair were sitting around a table drinking coffee and discussing Bronze Age pottery.

Jamie joined the others by a case to the left of the reception desk and stared blankly at an exhibit about how to turn flint nodules into sharp tools. Inside, she was fighting with that old remembered fear. She had been a kid, sick in bed with the flu. She'd wanted a drink of water, but the glass was on a far table and she felt too weak to get up for it. So she lay there looking at the glass, wishing she could have it, pretending she could make it come to her. She'd imagined her hand
closing around its smooth cool sides, imagined herself bringing it to the bed.

When the glass had actually come flying through the air, she'd been too startled, too terrified to catch it. It smacked into her pillow, splattering water all over. Her mother had been angry, and Jamie agreed that yes, she should have called someone instead of getting up herself. Then she buried the true memory as quickly as possible. There was no way that glass could have flown through the air on its own. If she had made that happen, she could do all sorts of things, frightening, unknowable things. It just hadn't happened. That recent moment in the Viking hall with the banner, had shaken loose the memory only a little.

But now it lay in front of her, a cold pool of fear she'd been trying to avoid for much of her life. And now she had to dive right into it.

At least she finally had an explanation—and a goal. And she was no longer alone. With the other two, she looked at the black metal sculpture across the room.

It would be cool to the touch, she was sure, but not smooth. The sculptor had pitted the surface with little pocks and bumps. Halfway up the twisted shape was a metal projection that hooked out like a misshapen cup handle. If she were to put a hand around that, she'd feel the cool rough metal against the palm of her hand, against the inside of her fingers as they wrapped around it. She would tighten her grip and feel the roughness press into her skin. She would tense her arm muscles and tug. Again, harder, and again. The sculpture would start to rock a little, then sway. Back and forth, back and forth until the piece was too off center. It would tip
over. The sculpture's great weight would crash onto the floor, pointy parts gouging holes in the carpet.

A rending crash caught her attention. There was the sculpture, actually toppled over on the floor. She just stared. Tyaak grabbed her arm and pulled her after him. The reception people had rushed from behind the desk and didn't see three children slip through the forbidden door.

Beyond the door was a hallway with small rounded rooms on either side. Cautiously they followed the hall to a larger room, where boxes were stacked on tables, and other tables had objects spread over them. Jamie glanced around but didn't see the bone-white staff, and none of the tables was the right bluish gray. The others also shook their heads. They moved on.

Voices, arguing voices, were coming from the next room. Quietly, the three slipped to the doorway and listened.

“No, I don't see how we can allow that,” a woman's voice said. “The technology by which it was found is unimportant. We are talking about a Human artifact over five thousand years old; it belongs here, pure and simple.”

The answering voice was high and musical. Tyaak whispered that it must belong to the Valgrindol. “There is nothing pure and simple about this, and the technology does very much matter in this case.”

A third voice chimed in, dry and rough, “The inspector is correct here. It was a routine energy survey that revealed the artifact, not an archaeological excavation.

“True,” the Human voice admitted, “but it was
found in a major archaeological site that has never been thoroughly excavated, and it registers as contemporary with that site.”

The lilting voice responded. “You forget, Director Johnston, that this is no ordinary Neolithic artifact we are discussing here. If it were, it would not be emitting the unidentified form of energy detected on the survey. It would not be defying all of our tests to determine the nature of that energy. If it were just a piece of five-thousand-year-old carved wood, we would gladly leave it on this planet for further study and display. But it is not.”

Again the dry voice intervened. “Both of you have valid arguments, but really, Inspector, would it not be most appropriate for the initial study, at least, to be conducted here?”

“I am surprised at you, Commissioner. Surely as a Kreeth you do not have enough faith in Human technology to trust these people with such an important find.”

“I object,” Director Johnston interjected.

“As do I,” the raspy Kreeth voice said. “In the years since contact, Human analytical technology has made considerable advances.”

With a grunt the Valgrindol continued. “Since I out-rank you both and hold a Beta security mandate, your objections are of little consequence. The object's archaeological importance is insignificant compared to what might be learned from studying the powerful energy it seems to be emitting. In light of the growing menace from those unexplained energy rifts in our neighboring sector, all new energy sources are of great security importance. So there must be no further delays.
I will leave with the artifact tonight and take it to the science station on Tarka Four.”

The Human's voice was tight. “Very well. See to the artifact's packing yourself. I want nothing further to do with this.”

At the sound of approaching footsteps, the three eavesdroppers crouched behind tables, but the woman stomping by was clearly too angiy to notice much of anything.

Cautiously Jamie and the others stood and listened some more.

The trilling Valgrindol commented, “Your director certainly gets emotional, but that should be expected of Humans.”

“It should be expected of any natives whose planet is losing control of an important artifact. I trust you will study it without destroying it.”

“Yes, yes, Commissioner, of course. Now help me with the transport box. It's over there.”

As the voices receded, the three children peered around the door. It was a large round room full of tables and odd-looking instruments. Its two occupants were walking to the far end. The Kreeth had sky-blue hair cut in a reverse mohawk, the sides bristly with a bare strip mown down the center. The Valgrindol was thin, totally hairless, and a pallid green. Jamie couldn't be certain if she was so repelled by the creature because it looked like a walking vegetable or because it might be one of the enemy, with its own reasons for wanting the staff. But other weird aliens hadn't made her skin crawl.

Without a word, she, Arni, and Tyaak crept into the
room to crouch beside a blue-gray table. The staff was lying there, exactly as Jamie had seen it.

Swiftly Tyaak reached out to grab it. But no sooner had his fingers touched the wood than the Valgrindol spun around. The face was as expressionless as a fish's, but the voice was not.

“So! I thought I felt some power here other than that staff. Let go of it!”

“No!” Tyaak yelled as he dashed for the door. He'd only gone a few steps before the Valgrindol snapped its fingers. A bolt of energy shot from its hand and wound like a fuzzy electrical snake around the staff. Tyaak struggled, but in a burst of sparks the staff was torn from him and whipped across the room.

“What was that?” the startled Kreeth demanded. “How did you—”

“Never mind. Catch those three! They are spies, saboteurs!”

But the three were already out the door. They ran through the other room, careened down the hall, and burst into the lobby. People—including the crew trying to raise the fallen sculpture—turned and stared.

“Not the elevator!” Tyaak called. “They could trap us there. This way!” He pelted down a side hallway, but Arni was soon out ahead. The red-haired boy reached a door, struggled with the unfamiliar handle, then flung it open.

“No, not that way!” Tyaak cried. “Over there!”

But it was too late. Several groups were already closing in, some with weapons drawn.

“On second thought …” Tyaak said, plunging out Arni's door with the others right behind.

As soon as she slammed the door behind her, Jamie knew this was a bad choice. Cold outside air. They were on a balcony, one of those they'd seen sloping down in short loops around the building. The air above was red with sunset—and the ground below was very far away.

Dizzily hugging the side of the building, Jamie shuffled after the others, trying not to look toward the uncomfortably low rampart. She picked up speed as she heard the door behind her open and close.

The sloping path rounded a corner and passed another door. Tyaak started to open it, but Arni had already run on. Shrugging, he hurried after the young Viking, with Jamie, feeling clammy and weak, sticking close behind. The path swung around another corner and dead-ended.

Arni squealed, skidding to a halt against the low wall. “Never mind,” he said as the others nearly collided with him, “well use magic to turn invisible. If that doesn't work, maybe it'll help us fly.”

Fly! Jamie thought as she slumped against the building's side. No way. Invisibility would work. She'd make it work! Imagine she wasn't here. She certainly didn't want to be. No one was here. Just empty air. Rough walls scoured by the wind. Empty space blowing with sunset light. Cold and empty nothing.

Footsteps and voices beyond the corner. A Kreeth peered around to their side, then turned back. “No, nothing there. They must have taken that other door. Go back.”