The Seeds of Time (3 page)

“An explosion. An hour out toward Crippen. We don’t know for sure, but we think there was a leak in a fuel transport line. Got touched off by an electrical spark. Three wounded, sounds like critically. And the bay door is still jammed half open.”

The nightmare continued, everything going wrong. Then there was Shaw,
Babyhawk’s
pilot, on comm, moving into docking range.

“Hold your position,
Babyhawk,”
Clio told Shaw, “we have a little delay here.”

Russo was on the comm, getting tech reports; growling at bad news, barking something about the teleoperator maneuvering system, in case they needed to work on the ship surface. Which techs were saying wasn’t needed.

Shaw’s voice came crackling into Clio’s ears. “You just get your little delay greased up and dumped out, Lieutenant, I got casualties here, and they’re getting real quiet. You copy?”

“Roger. We are jumping on it, Commander. We’re gonna bring you in.”

The earphones crackled again. “You’re going to bring us in? That’s real good news,
Starhawk
, now I can sleep. What’s the goddamn problem out there, Finn? Over.”

The captain nodded at her, and Clio answered, “The bay doors won’t respond,
Babyhawk
. We’re working it. Another five minutes and I’m going out there and rip the damn things open with a crowbar.”

Faintly,
Babyhawk
responded. “My God.” Then: “I got a man dying here,
Starhawk
. Cut the damn doors off, if you have to.”

Clio looked to Russo, got a slow shake of the head.

“Negative,
Babyhawk
, that’s last resort. We’re working this. Stand by.”

Nothing then from Shaw. Clio felt the silence like a fist in her gut.

An hour later they cut the door off after all, with crew hating to use torches, suited up as they were in the unpressurized landing bay. Then
Babyhawk
locked on, and they hauled out the casualties. One man dead, Lieutenant Runnel printed on the breast pocket: a helpful clue since most of his face was blackened with burns. Two biotechs burned real bad, one of them with blisters for eyes, both unconscious. Posie took charge of them, looking like a man in way over his head.

Hillis was there, too. Leaned close to Clio, whispered, “I dumped the blood. It’s gone.”

Heading home, Clio got
Starhawk
well into Dive, then sat by the two wounded men in medlab. She was patched in
by remote to bridge control, listening for any alarms, half hoping for some.

Clio watched the life leak out of her two crewmates. In Dive, you saw things like that. Life exiting like spilled water.

If you die on a Space Recon Dive, deep in the past, the event doesn’t set up a paradox. No one in the present is affected. Your children, for instance, don’t disappear. Of course, Diving in inhabited space could produce dangerous paradoxes. Anything that you changed would set other changes in motion, in geometric progression, ultimately threatening the very future from which you came. But in the wilderness of space, the Dive was ninety-nine percent safe from encountering human history, from creating paradoxes. So the theory went.

Clio kept her deathwatch. When her crewmates’ faces were dim as the pallets they lay on, Clio knew they were dead.

They docked on station deep into Clio’s sleep period. She heard the ship whine down into position, the metal on metal of docking, the comm system come alive throughout the ship, footsteps as the crew got ready to off-load.

She grabbed her duffel, already packed, and moved through the airlock behind Teeg. Once in the station corridor, he turned around, blinking against the glaring lights of day period.

“Hey Clio. We’re going to have a drink. How about a drink?” Teeg looked tired, but he looked fine, damn if he didn’t. Big brown puppy eyes, a sculpted face saved from drop-dead beauty by a nose broken once too often. Still, a handsome dog, and always ready to jump her.

“I’m going to bed, Teeg. See you tomorrow.”

“Need any company?”

“I meant sleep. Going to get some sleep.” She threw him a big smile, enough to cushion the refusal. Teeg was thin-skinned. She headed down to quarters, feeling Teeg’s eyes pull her clothes off as she walked. Truth was, she might like some company. Just not Harper Teeg.

Then she noticed someone waiting for her. Shit. Timeco crew. The competition. Called himself Starfish Void in the quirky way of Divers.

“Hi, Void,” Clio said, pumping up a smile.

“Hey, Finn.” He scuttled to catch up with her as she strode down the corridor. “Heard you had a bad Dive.” He looked up at her, watching for a reaction. “Heard you lost crew. That right?”

“That what you heard?” Clio shook her head, keeping the smile pasted on.

“Heard you got five or six dead, that right?”

“We might of had some trouble. Can’t say for sure.” She looked at him pointedly. “Wasn’t my shift.”

Starfish looked hurt. “Don’t have to bite my head off, Finn. It’s all over station, anyhow.”

Clio looked down at him, a full head shorter than she, fidgeting under her gaze. “Sorry, Void. I know you’re just worried about me.”

“That’s right. I was worried. So you’re OK, then, huh? Dive fifty-six and still going strong I guess?”

“Dive fifty-six already? Gee, I lost count. You keeping count, Void? Not nervous, are you? You’re up to what, thirty or so Dives?”

“Thirty-two.”

Clio peeled off to a connecting corridor, turned to wave him off. “You shouldn’t keep count, Starfish. It’s bad luck.” She turned on her heel and left him standing there, looking confused.

Clio unclenched her teeth. Could have told him some juicy details, girl. Could have given him more than a brush-off. Might need a friend or two, come the hearing.

Vandarthanan Station opened up before her as she walked, its giant circle containing a web of inner circles, connecting corridors—and a honeycomb of offices, labs, and crew quarters.

Vanda Station was the new generation of station, catering to ultratech employees, used to the amenities. A scoured refuge from the Sickness gripping Earth. Clean air, a few green pockets, gyms, video centers, and for senior techs, family quarters. You could have sex with a coworker without a scratch test, that was how good the Vanda screening process was. You could drop in on VandaPet to visit the communal pets. Stroke a cat, release tension, lower blood pressure. If you got sick, even a cold, you went into Retreat with full sick leave, and if you recovered you went back to work, no stigma at all.

But what Clio needed right now was a bed. She passed
a cluster of space pilots in HQ Section, a great crossroad where a big spoke to the station’s inner rings joined the main corridor. The group, mostly men, stared at her as she passed.

Clio knew what they were thinking: Not a real pilot. But paid three times what a space pilot gets. Even the young ones get premium pay. Eighteen-year-olds, some of them, paid like royalty. Then there’s Clio Finn. Thinks she’s the Queen of Sheba. Biotime thinks so too. Maybe the Crippen Dive will change all that.

Clio smiled at them, at their guarded faces, pale above their green Recon uniforms. Be good, Clio, she told herself Don’t power up the rivalry. And watch your backside.

One of the women nodded to her, a gesture of sisterhood. Don’t snub Clio Finn in front of the men. But Clio knew if she met that pilot in the station bar, she’d stare right past Clio, no mistake.

She passed Quarantine Section, with its heavy doors, windowless walls. You could guess what lay within Quarantine Section: giant, exotic growths, the baobabs of other worlds; or delicate what-passed-for-ferns, or the merest alien fuzz in a petri dish. The universe produced plant life in abundance. Some of it was Earthlike, variations on the themes of leaf and chlorophyll, pistil and stamen. Some of it was a lethal variation. These died a quiet death in Quarantine. And even these were mourned, having traveled down the aeons, down the tracts of space to replenish the greying Earth. You dove for pearls. And some of them you threw back.

She passed the Leery Room, in Free Section. Inside, Clio knew, was housed the biggest catch in Space Recon’s twelve-year history. The room itself had become a habitat, with dirt paths winding through a lowland rain forest, both familiar and strange. It was green; it had things that might be called trees, a few soaring almost to the thirty-meter-high ceiling. There were groundcovers, vines and flowers. The flowers were the strangest, their stalks kaleidoscope tubes of color, their tips sprays of leaves.

The haul was from Leery, a planet that had been
discovered three years ago, just ten years after Sri Sarvepalli Vandarthanan had described the mechanics of time travel. Leery was the haul they had dreamed of; when it emerged from quarantine on Vanda Station the previous year, the crew doubled their bonus. Up until Leery, Recon found minor caches on minor planets; this was the jackpot. Leery’s planet had passed this way three million years before Earth, and now the vast rotation of the galaxy brought Earth into the vicinity Leery had once known. A ship went back and got the haul. And the crew retired on that bonus—except for the Dive pilot, who couldn’t, by contract, retire.

No matter. He burned out two Dives later anyway, in the manner of Dive pilots, brief creatures that they were.

Clio found her assigned cubicle in crew quarters and hit the bed, still dressed. She cut the lights, waited for sleep to take her.

After a few minutes she jabbed at the console, opened the viewport, and watched the stars on nightside. The port window clouded dark as her cabin turned toward the sun, then cleared again to display the nightside stars. Count the cycles, the rotations, lose count, cycle off to sleep.

She lay watching the stars, watching for shooting stars, though none existed here, watching like a child on her back in the grass. Summer nights in North Dakota, when Mom and Elsie finally went to bed and all the house lights were out, you could see those stars plummet down, sometimes in a long swift drive like your best shooter marble racing into the playing circle.

She woke with a start. Ellison Brisher was sitting on the bunk next to hers. Ellison Brisher. Christ.

“Know how to knock?” She struggled up onto an elbow, turned on the light.

“Always a pleasure to see you, Clio. Even when you’re in a bad mood.” Brisher was wearing a one-piece grey jumpsuit, lending him an elephantine look. He peered at her from tiny eyes.

Clio sat up. “What time is it?”

“Nine. Breakfast is over. You hungry?”

“No. Thanks.”

His eyes flicked to the zipper on her togs, where it was pulled down from her throat. She zipped up. Cocked her head at him. Get to the point.

“This Crippen affair is a bad business, Clio, bad business. The Bureau’s called a hearing. You’re the main witness, I’m afraid. Chocolate fizz?” He pointed a roll of fizzes at her.

“I’m
the main witness? What about Russo?”

He shrugged, popped a fizz in his mouth. “Ah yes, Captain Russo. We’ll question her too. Good idea. You’re grounded, by the way.” He leaned closer, thrusting out the fizzes. “Sure?”

She stared at his round, tranquil face. “You can’t ground me, Ellison. You need me.”

“Well, we all have our fantasies, Clio. About being needed, et cetera.” He stood slowly, squeezing out a long breath. “I gave up on that fantasy a long time ago. That’s why I’m in charge and you’re not.”

Clio kept her face neutral. “That all?”

“No. We’ve got a new man on crew. Want you to meet him. Name’s Peter vander Zee. Goes by Zee. Astrophysicist. Replacing Ahrens.”

“Too bad. I liked Ahrens.”

“And you’ll like vander Zee. Zee. He’s young, and quite brilliant. A prodigy, in fact. Youngest astrophysics graduate ever out of Princeton.” Brisher looked down at her a long time, perhaps waiting for her to squirm. She didn’t “Try to watch out for this kid, would you do that?” he said. “The crew likes you, they’ll follow your lead. He’s young, maybe a bit of a hotshot. Take him under your wing, can you do that?”

“What am I supposed to do, make sure he gets naps?”