The Lord of the Sands of Time (15 page)

“Based on the depth of each silo, a rough calculation of the amount of energy available allows us to estimate how far they can upstream. We’re already working on that. When we get the answer, we’ll be leaving too,” said Alexandr.

“So we can go from branch to branch, knocking off the crabs.”

“See? You do get it. I’ll have to add tons of caterpillar friends to the story so they’ll have a fighting chance. Damn, the subplots are going to get out of control. I wonder if Shumina will read the whole thing.”

“Maybe not till you finish serializing it. Who knows, maybe the ending won’t be happy,” said Orville.

“Don’t say that!” Alexandr sounded back to normal, which made Orville feel more like himself too. “Have you notified Cutty?”

“Of course, but she’s totally occupied,” said Alexandr. “I wonder what would keep her from dealing with something this important.”

Just then Cutty joined the conversation. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I am returning to support mode. I was trying to crack a very difficult cipher. The enemy made a transmission from their communications hub. By laser to Teegarden’s Star, twelve light years from Earth.”

“Does that mean we were wrong about where they came from?” Alexandr asked impatiently. But Cutty’s response was glum.

“Teegarden is a red dwarf. We wouldn’t expect to find intelligent life in its vicinity. In the twenty-sixth century humans had an unmanned observation station on one of the planets out there—it feels strange to talk about this in the past tense, doesn’t it?—but all it detected were some chemically synthesized bacteria.”

“But the ET wouldn’t beam a message to an unoccupied location,” said Orville.

“Correct, so this is still an open investigation. And I haven’t broken the cipher. There is insufficient data. But your discovery is quite important, Alexandr. I just searched our database of images from the Northern Hemisphere. It appears there are more than 400 silos worldwide.”

“Then we need a new strategy,” said Alexandr. “If the ET are going to upstream without limit, we’ll have to match them. But there’s also a limit to our numbers. Why don’t we take a page from the enemy’s playbook and start self-replicating?”

Orville was shocked by this proposal. “If we started using self-replication, we’d end up overwhelming the human race. Don’t forget, our mission is to
serve
mankind.”

“That’s true,” said Cutty. “And there’s no advantage to dividing our forces. Instead of chasing after individual ET across multiple timestreams, we should upstream farther back in time and defend the future from there.”

“You say ‘farther back in time,’ but how far do we go? The enemy has the initiative,” said Alexandr.

“I have a plan,” said Cutty. “Original and Descendant Messengers, please join us.” Cutty opened the conversation. Messengers all over the planet now heard her voice.

“First, I’m sending you the data on Alexandr’s discovery. Has everyone received it? Then here’s my analysis: the enemy has acquired the capability to upstream without limit. Logically, they could travel back to the root of this timestream and inflict damage on Earth as it was several billion years ago. However, I doubt they will do that.”

“Why?” said Alexandr.

“Because if the damage they inflict takes place too far in the past, it won’t influence the human species. Biological evolution is highly adaptive. Given enough time, even the effects of extensive damage can be overcome. Of course, the new evolutionary path may yield humans that are not primates or even mammals. But the concept of parallel evolution should apply across branching timestreams. Therefore, the best way to retard the progress of humanity for the longest possible period is to inflict damage as close to the present as possible. The enemy knows this.”

“You must have an idea where they will strike.”

“I believe the most critical, vulnerable period for mankind is the point at which modern humans are just emerging as a distinct species. Therefore, we must go back a hundred thousand years, to the African savannah. There we defend the species to the death, with all our forces. We draw a defensive line and prevent the enemy from upstreaming any further.”

“I’m not impressed by your logic,” said Orville. “What defensive ‘line’? We can’t create a physical barrier. Is there a technique to prevent the enemy from upstreaming wherever they want?”

“There is no such technique,” replied Cutty. “What I propose is merely a plan of action. We upstream a hundred thousand years, settle in, and maintain a vigil until each breakaway group of enemy finds us. Then we eliminate them piecemeal. It’s inconceivable that they could upstream that far in a single jump.”

The network fell silent. A thousand centuries? Was it really possible to defend a span of time that long?

“Of course,” Cutty continued, “our hardware was not designed for such extended deployment. We will use cryostasis technology to extend our operational lives for as long as possible.” This last remark failed to lighten the stunned atmosphere hanging over the network. Cutty casually added: “We will hold a referendum on this plan in sixty seconds. If anyone has objections or questions, now is the time.”

There was silence for forty-five seconds. For Messengers, with their high-speed language and powers of thought, it was like a human year. But on the forty-sixth second, Alexandr spoke. “What an idiotic plan, even if it is the best we have. Cutty?”

“Alexandr.”

“My story is going to be so long, no one will read it.”

“I’ll abridge it for you.”

“I’ll do it myself,” he said, signaling agreement to the plan. A few of the Messengers laughed. In seconds, the votes started coming in. In ten seconds, the ayes topped 50 percent. A few moments later they approached 90 percent. The voice of Cutty cut in. “Then it’s settled.”

“Wait. I’m out.” It was Orville.

“And may we know the reason?” Cutty said.

“Mankind will be wiped out downstream of every era where the enemy stops off in the process of finding us.”

“True. Streams without us in their past—this stream, for example—will be abandoned. Ultimately it will be as if they never existed. Indeed, they
will
have never existed, like a decision left unmade. We will defend all timestreams generated after our arrival one hundred thousand years in the past.”

“Not possible,” said Orville. “Do you know how many streams we will generate in a hundred thousand years?”

“Perhaps you can tell me. I do not care. My mission is to secure a single timestream for humanity to be safe from attack for all eternity.”

Orville shook his head. “I’ll defend the timestreams you propose to abandon. When I’m finished, I’ll upstream and rendezvous with you a hundred thousand years
B.C.E.
It won’t affect your combat strength.”

“Defend mankind against ET scattered across more than four hundred timestreams! And how will you do that?” Cutty snapped. The network buzzed with murmurs of astonishment. Orville muttered, “That’s my problem.”

“I’ll go with him.” Several voices rose simultaneously. Orville realized one of them was Quench. He wasn’t surprised. Quench owed his existence to the Original Messengers’ efforts to push back the enemy.

Twenty-four Messengers volunteered to join Orville. Cutty was silent, apparently deliberating. Orville pressed his advantage.

“I’m telling you, by the time we rendezvous, my Messengers will have accumulated experience from thousands of enemy engagements. And if we manage to create some productive timestreams, more Descendants might join us.”

“This initiative of yours will affect our combat strength,” said Cutty. “It requires another vote.”

The results stunned Orville. More than 90 percent approval—it might have been 100 percent had the Messengers all voted with their guts. Cutty sounded resigned. “You are hereby authorized, but you will also take one of my subunits for support and to document the action. The subunit will be installed on your weapons.”

Document the action? I can do that myself
, Orville was about to object, but he kept silent. He knew what Cutty was up to.

“I now close this conference. Please upstream once you complete your current task. If you do not have sufficient energy, my assembly point is London. I will descend and pick you up.”

As the buzz of discussion faded away, Orville found himself once more enveloped by the silence of a snow-covered landscape. Even the occasional plane taking off and landing was strangely muffled.

He sat down on a discarded ammo crate. In that vast quietude, memories of Sayaka came welling up. Even now he could remember every word of every conversation they’d had. That is what it meant to be an AI. But with the passage of time, the very concreteness of the data seemed to make the reality of what he had actually experienced, of how his body had responded to her, harder and harder to hold on to.

Sayaka cherished loyalty to humanity. He had been moved by her conviction. Yet they had never come to a conclusion regarding what was most precious. For Orville, in this time and place, the notion of defending the ocean of history, that gigantic system of endlessly branching timestreams, had been replaced by an almost heartbreaking mass of details. Each tributary on each stream cut through the bedrock of the universe thanks to the power and flow of human experience. Given the attention it deserved, no one drop was more or less valuable than another. Cutty Sark ignored individuality; her formidable analytic mill reduced everything to abstractions. He felt an unbridgeable gulf opening between them.

If Sayaka had met Cutty, what would she say? Images of her, of those intense conversations with friends that lasted till dawn, flooded his mind. She never yielded an inch of ground to anyone. Yes, she and Cutty would have struck some serious sparks. Both aimed at something that was the same, yet crucially different. Was it really only a matter of the collective, the species, versus the interests of the individual? Or was it about something far more important?

Orville was overwhelmed with longing. When he had held Sayaka’s lithe body, the truth had always seemed so obvious. But that was in the past, in a time yet to come, a future that would never come. Like snow gleaming on distant peaks, it was gradually sublimating, vanishing into the aether.

“Cutty Sark is pretty cold-blooded. Do you trust her?” Quench’s matter-of-fact voice put an end to Orville’s musings. He rubbed the stubble on his jaw as he brought himself back to reality.

“No. Cutty’s very capable. Anyway, commanders are like that. The subunit is probably to make sure we don’t start a rebellion.”

“What a dictator,” Quench groaned.

“That’s how they made her,” Orville replied calmly enough. “No use complaining. We Messengers were made to focus on individuals. Cutty looks at the big picture. Our designers thought of everything.”

In Quench’s silence, Orville sensed that the other Messengers might have come to a decision. Finally Quench spoke. “Those of us who are going with you consider you our leader from now on. Everyone’s agreed.”

“I’m on Cutty’s blacklist now, you know,” said Orville.

“Doesn’t matter. We’re on it with you.”

Orville gave a bitter laugh. “Suit yourself.”

“Original Messenger!” said Quench. “We await your orders.”

“Assemble in London. We have to pick up the subunit, and I want to meet all of you in person.” Just then a young pilot walked past. Orville recognized him and waved him over. “Listen, when’s the next flight to London?”

“London?” asked the pilot. “No direct flights, but that Messerschmitt Gigant is leaving for Oslo in twenty minutes.” The enormous six-engine transport at the edge of the runway was taking on cargo. Orville had never seen one of these ungainly aircraft. He looked it over with interest.

“I’d be happy to fly you personally. You’ll want to reach your destination quickly, I expect.”

Orville looked at the pilot. His left hand was bandaged; he’d been wounded a week before, when the transport he was piloting had been attacked by FET. Now he was grounded. If Orville named him pilot, he could return to the air, even somewhat handicapped as he was. There were few opportunities to win distinction flying transports, but Orville knew he was one of their best.

“Then I name you pilot, Hartmann. Get your orders in the command center and report back.”

“Jawohl!” The youth’s face glowed with pleasure. He saluted and took off at a run. It was a sight Orville would never forget.

J
APAN A.D.
248

The fighting at Toyokawa was a bloody affair. Just as the Kunu messenger had warned, they found that the fan-shaped plateau extending from the foot of the mountains was so thick with wriggling Kappa and Centipede ET that the ground was hardly visible. The base of the tableland was ringed with waiting Reapers and Jumpers.

The Yamatai forces opened the battle with hundreds of huge darts fired from Scorpio catapults, a weapon from far-off Roma. Until the Messenger taught them the techniques of construction, they had known of this weapon only by name.

Equipped with steel armor and swords, the Yamatai armies charged the waiting Reapers. Eight hundred yards to the rear, in her palanquin, Miyo heard the low rumble as their lines collided. She saw dead soldiers hurtling through the air like dolls, streaming blood. Thunderous explosions sent columns of greasy smoke into the sky above the battlefield. Crossbow bolts glancing off the enemy glittered in the distance like spray in the sun.

The line was contested for hours, until the dead lay in heaps. The Messenger was always in the thick of the fighting, his great sword slashing in all directions until the ground around him was strewn with twisted metal. But it was not the Messenger who decided the battle’s outcome. It was the Emishi, whose lands had been stolen by the mononoké. They broke the enemy line after a suicide attack that claimed more than half their men. Miyo seized the opportunity and sent her small force of cavalry to strike the retreating foe. This marked the end of the Reapers. The small green Kappa and many-handed Centipedes were poor fighters and were cut down by the thousand.

When the armies reached the forest atop the plateau, they discovered round stone structures like forts on the rocky ground. The nests of the mononoké. They were extremely tough—even with war hammers the men could not break them down—but the entrances to the nests were open. The men poured in water and oil, tossed torches into the openings and sealed them. Soon the nests erupted in towering pillars of fire. The explosions were violent, incinerating the soldiers who stayed too close to the nests after delivering the oil and torches.

After the battle came the Wasps, the size of dogs, droning over the battleground on transparent wings. These kindred of the Messenger were keen lookouts in the sky, but they could not fight. They landed and examined the ground with their feelers, looking for small black fragments of metal to eat. They had a taste for the bodies of young mononoké. It was said they would not harm people, but no soldier dared approach them.

After the straggling Reapers and Jumpers had been dispatched, the men smashed the remains of the nests. They had completed their trial by fire acquiring the combat techniques they would use in countless future engagements.

In their camp near Lake Hamana, Miyo saw a map of Japan for the first time in her life. “This is the Land of Wa. The shaded area is ocean, the white is land,” said the Messenger.

They were in a pavilion guarded by soldiers. The Messenger’s brush sped over the silk as he drew the map. The shape that emerged was like nothing Miyo imagined, extending diagonally across the cloth from upper right to lower left. It resembled some sort of creature. Miyo looked up at the Messenger, perplexed.

“I don’t recognize this island. Where is Kunu? Or Yamatai?”

“Kunu is here, on this plain. Yamatai, in this basin here.”

“What, is Yamatai so small?” asked Miyo.

“The island is huge. To the east lies the largest plain in Wa and the biggest iron mines.” It was not just the shape of her country Miyo had never seen. The lands beyond Kunu were shrouded in mists of uncertainty. Nothing was known of their geography or the names of those places, or about the relationships between chiefdoms—which were friends and which were foe. She did not even know how far to the east the land extended. She could only listen like a child and try to remember the place names the Messenger taught her. The journey to Lake Hamana alone had seemed long enough to reach China. When she thought of the distance that lay before them, she felt close to dizzy. “The Land of Wa is so vast.”

“If that’s what you think, I’d better not show you a map of the world. You’d faint. Roma and Kentak are a hundred times farther.”

“One hundred!” exclaimed Miyo. The Messenger smiled. Miyo leaned toward him. “You have been to other countries, yes? You’ve seen Roma and Kentak?”

“I have,” said the Messenger.

“Tell me about them.” Kan brought cups and a beaker of sake. He turned to go, but Miyo stopped him. “Kan, you should hear this too, about the lands beyond.”

“But my lady…” Kan feared it would be presumptuous.

“Don’t be so formal. The Messenger’s tales are always better with an audience. Isn’t that right, O?” The Messenger said nothing, and Kan seemed unconvinced. Nonetheless, Miyo tugged the boy’s hand and made him sit. The Messenger took up a cup.

“Shall I tell you about Kentak, then?”

“Yes. Please.”

“I arrived in 1863, to intervene in the North-South War and destroy the ET.” The Messenger began his story. Miyo had heard many of these tales since the armies embarked on their expedition. Each began the same way, with an unknown era in an unknown land.

“At that time, Kentak was part of a country called America, where the white-skinned peoples had taken over from the red-skinned tribes. The country was divided into whites who held the black-skinned slaves by force, and other whites who were opposed to slavery.”

“They wanted to kill the slaves?” asked Miyo.

“Kill them? No, they wanted to free them.”

“Then what? Would they abandon them?”

“They assumed the slaves could fend for themselves,” replied the Messenger.

“How heartless,” said Miyo. “Slaves would die without their masters.”

“People in the north of that land thought it would be better for the slaves to die than to be worked like beasts.”

Miyo quietly poured the sake for Kan. Although Kan disliked the Messenger, he always found these tales from other times and places enchanting and strange. How could a country get along without slaves? There were curious lands indeed on the other side of the ocean. Yet as Kan the slave found himself stressing the indispensability of slaves, it occurred to him that there was something odd about it all, though he could not say exactly what.

“Well then, did you fight to free the slaves?” asked Kan.

“No. I told you, I was pursuing the ET. Slavery did not concern me. In fact, I used the slaves against the enemy. I roused them and sent them out to fight. And many of them died, among the seven hundred thousand who fell from North and South. Maybe there were more. Toward the end the situation was so confused I couldn’t keep track. Perhaps by trying to help, I only made history worse than it would have been.”

“And you joined with people in that era to fight, as you do here?” asked Miyo.

“Yes, I did.” The Messenger suddenly seemed at a loss for words. He looked up into space. Miyo waited, thinking she might hear the names of those he had known. But finally he shook his head. “They all perished.”

“You lost?” said Kan. Miyo glared at him, but he took no notice. He was gazing at the Messenger.

“It’s not as if you killed them,” said Miyo. “In fact there must have been some countries that fell before you were able to help.”

“Japan, in 1710,” said the Messenger. “It was the Genroku era. They simply did not have the strength to fight the ET. I had barely gotten them organized when Honshu was wiped out, then the three other main islands. The Satsuma clan managed to hole up in the Ryukyu Islands, but there was no way we could win. In the end I had to withdraw.”

“Where is Japan?” asked Miyo.

The Messenger smiled. Miyo rarely saw this vulnerable, relaxed expression. Even when he laughed, he rarely opened up like this, and never when conferring with his captains or urging the men on.

Wherever he went, thousands were caught up in his exploits. The harder he fought, the more men died. Mountains of dead and oceans of blood marked his path. Expecting him to shed tears when recounting these horrors was useless. He must have lost the strength to cry long ago.

For Miyo it was the same. Since leaving her homeland, she had seen nothing but death. The soldiers guarding her palanquin seemed to change daily. These men, whose laughter and quarrels she heard through the wicker screen, were like chestnuts being fed into an enormous mortar, daily broken into pieces.

She ordered them to fight. She ordered them to cut down anyone who tried to run away. All she could do in return was to promise to make each day’s burials as lavish as possible. And still they obeyed her. They heard again and again that their homes would burn if they were defeated, and seeing the ruined villages along the way, the men faced the enemy with a boldness that startled their leaders.

Miyo noticed Kan was nodding off. She sent him away. Now she was alone with the Messenger. “Aren’t you going to turn in, Miyo?” he said.

“I should ask the same of you,” Miyo replied. He gave her a sharp look of concern. Then he gradually seemed to understand, but shifted nervously in his place on the dais. “So you haven’t been sleeping either,” he said.

“No. There are too many ghosts,” said Miyo.

“I’m sorry I pulled you into this. You didn’t have to be here. Lord Ikima should have come in your place.”

“I’m not sorry. It’s given me the chance to know you.”

“I’m not worth knowing,” said the Messenger.

“Really? I would know you more.” Miyo felt her pulse quicken as she took his hand. It was a huge, muscular hand with tapered fingers. He recoiled in surprise, but she gripped his hand tight and placed it against her breast.

“You don’t have a wife, do you?”

“No, but…”

“I know,” said Miyo. “You promised yourself to another, and you intend to return to her one day. But when will that be? Ten years from now? A hundred? A thousand?” Miyo tugged on his arm but he did not move. Instead she drew herself toward him. “Is this woman so important that you would wait alone for a thousand years just to spend a bit more time with her?”

The Messenger turned away. He was staring at his other hand. “This hand remembers her. This remembers that human form, how it felt. That’s the basic difference between me and Cutty Sark, a difference my makers granted me. If I forgot about Sayaka, it would be like forgetting who I am.”

“O…” Miyo had feared these very words, but on actually hearing them, she felt her strength draining away. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and anger at being spurned for another, yet she could hardly deny his feelings. But as she began to withdraw her hand, he gripped it harder. “Miyo,” O said. He looked at her, his faced etched with pain. “I can’t go back.”

“What?”

“I’ll never go back. We’ve changed too much history. Sayaka’s timestream is buried under the far reaches of eternity. The odds of her being born again are a hundred billion to one—no, even less. There’s no way I could ever reach her now. My memories of her are all I have, but even my memory isn’t immune to the passing of time.”

He clasped her roughly, holding her with a fierce strength. Passionately he whispered the name of a stranger in her ear, over and over. Just as passionately, Miyo suppressed the resentment she felt rising within her. O had carried this burden for far longer than she could imagine. He had abandoned his native land, knowing he could never return.

She exhaled deeply, releasing the tension in her body. If necessary, she was ready to be his lost lover. All she wanted was to bring this man some measure of peace.

“O, tell me your name. Your real name.”

“My name.”

“Let me call you by your true name.”

“Orville.”

“Orville,” she repeated. For a moment the Messenger shuddered violently, as if an electric current had passed through him. He began to weep uncontrollably. Miyo struggled free, then embraced his powerful body again.