Steve White - Blood of the Heroes

Blood of the Heroes

by STEVE WHITE

Chapter One

Jason Thanou had never really cared for Earth all that much. Now, watching the blue-white-and-buff

globe wax in the observation lounge's wraparound viewscreen, he saw nothing in the spectacle to make

him forget his dislike.

So, he wondered, why am I reacting this way?

He knew he had no reason to be surprised. It was always the same, aboard a ship approaching

Earth—no other planet had the same effect, not even the planet of his birth. It came at the indefinable

moment when the mother planet, as sentimentalists called it, ceased to be away and became down—a

world and not an astronomical object. Nor did the feeling fade with familiarity; he still felt the excited

apprehension that caused the heart to race and the skin to tingle and the bowels to loosen. It never

changed. Nor was it unique to him. Most outworlders admitted to the same strange exhilaration, and

Jason had never found the others' denials convincing.

Still, he wondered why. Especially on this occasion, when he was here against his will and should by

rights have felt nothing but cold distaste.

He decided the animus and the shivers both had the same cause: the sheer, psychologically oppressive

ancientness of the place. It was a world—no, the world—that humans had not molded from barrenness

over the past few centuries (to use the Earth-standard units of time everyone still used, which was yet

another irritant). Here, the memory of billions of human lives across thousands of years permeated every

acre. History had soaked into the soil like blood—an apt simile, from what Jason knew of Earth's past,

which was quite a lot thanks to the job he'd once had. . . .

And to which he was now returning involuntarily. The resentment that had been simmering within him for

the entire voyage boiled up anew, banishing his philosophical musings and leaving only a flat dislike of

everything about this trip, especially this overripe fruit of a planet.

Jason heard a soft murmuring behind him as stewards moved among the passengers in the lounge. No

blaring announcement from an intercom—this was a pricey spaceline. That, at least, was one way he'd

been able to exact revenge. He had booked passage normally beyond his means, knowing he would

have to be reimbursed.

"Excuse me, Commander Thanou," said one of the stewards diffidently. "We are entering our final

approach pattern for Pontic Spaceport."

Jason smiled inwardly at the name of Eastern Europe's central spaceport on the steppes north of the

Black Sea, so typical of the Earth fad for reviving place names of archaic flavor. "Thank you. Has my

planetside transportation been arranged as I requested?"

"It has, Commander. You have a reservation on an aircoach departing two hours after our arrival. We

have made certain that you will arrive in Athens by midafternoon local time." The steward's courtesy,

verging on obsequiousness, went beyond the requirements of his job.

"Excellent," Jason said absently, most of his attention on the viewscreen. The north coastline of the

Mediterranean was beginning to scroll beneath the ship.

Why Athens? Jason wondered, not for the first time. Why does Rutherford want me to report to him

at his office there, and not at Service headquarters in Australia? Is it just another of his little ways

of irritating me?

Well, two can play at that game. . . .

"Thank the purser for me," he said. "And now, I think I'll return to my stateroom. I believe I have time to

change clothes before we land."

"Most certainly, Commander." The steward's attitude was reflected in the stares from Jason's fellow

passengers as he left the lounge. He'd grown used to that attitude, and those stares, since the nature of his

business on Earth had become general shipboard knowledge.

Time travelers had that effect on people.

* * *

"I assume you're trying to irritate me," said Kyle Rutherford coldly.

"Whatever do you mean?" asked Jason with an air of innocence whose bogusness was insultingly

obvious.

Rutherford merely continued to glare from behind his desk, to the left of the door which had just slid

silently shut behind Jason. Opposite the door, a virtual window provided a view of Athens from a higher

level than the office in fact occupied. The location was about right, though, peering over the Philopappos

Hill toward the Acropolis, serene in its ruined perfection, timeless . . . literally timeless as well as

figuratively so, in the temporal stasis bubble that enclosed it. The technology had come too late to protect

it from the atmospheric pollution that had almost eaten it away in the Hydrocarbon Era. But now, with

that gone, what was left stood in the unique, eerie clarity of motionless air, to be gazed at from without

rather than suffering the unintended vandalism of millions of tramping feet.

Elsewhere, the office held memorabilia. To the right, the wall opposite Rutherford's desk was covered

with photographs at which a visitor from a couple of generations back would have peered in deepening

puzzlement. Behind his desk, a display case contained various ordinary-seeming if very old-fashioned

objects . . . which, Jason decided with an inner chuckle, made it a fitting backdrop for Rutherford.

"You know what I mean!" Rutherford finally blurted. He nearly forgot to speak in the pedantic accent

affected by Earth's intelligentsia when addressing outworlders and other vulgarians.

"Oh, this." Jason pretended to finally notice the target of Rutherford's glare. He glanced down at the

uniform he was wearing—field gray, with facings of silver-edged dark green, very much in a traditional

quasi-military style. "I am entitled to wear it, you know, being an active-duty officer of the Hesperian

Colonial Rangers."

The irony was that he hadn't worn it in . . . he'd forgotten how long. The difficulty of getting the Rangers

into uniforms was so proverbial that it had become a point of pride with them. They even added their

own flamboyant individual touches to the starkly utilitarian and unmilitary-looking field versions. Only on

very special occasions, and under extreme duress, could they be induced to put on the service dress kit

in which Jason now stood, and on which he had lavished a hitherto well-concealed capacity for spit and

polish.

"I must beg to correct you," said Rutherford in a voice as frosty as his thinning hair and neatly trimmed

Vandyke beard. "You're in the Temporal Service."

"Not any more!"

"I call your attention to the agreement by which you were permitted to take extremely early retirement

from the Service—specifically to Part VI, Article D, Paragraph 15, Subparagraph—"

"Yes, yes, I know! The errand boy you sent to Hesperia explained it to me in great and loving detail." In

fact, Jason had known about the deliberately inconspicuous clause all along. He had just never dreamed

it would actually be invoked.

Rutherford permitted himself a tight little smile of constipated triumph. "Well, then, you understand that

the Temporal Regulatory Authority has the right to reactivate you under certain special circumstances.

Those circumstances have now arisen, and the right has been exercised. The Hesperian planetary

government has placed you on temporary detached duty with the Service."

"Not of my own free will!"

Rutherford sighed theatrically. "Let us have done with this nonsense. I recall very well that you quit the

Service five years ago in some childish fit of pique, and returned to your homeworld in the . . . oh, what

system is it?"

"Psi 5 Aurigae," Jason ground out between gritted teeth. Pretended inability to remember which colonial

system was which was yet another grating affectation of Rutherford's type of Earthman.

"But of course. At any rate, you rejoined that system's paramilitary constabulary, from which the Service

had previously recruited you for your—" Rutherford looked like he had bitten into a bad pickle

"—undeniable talents. Evidently you had decided that nursemaiding terraformers and tracking down

smugglers of forbidden nanotechnology and rescuing thrill-seekers were more rewarding than the

opportunity you had previously been afforded to do something important."

Jason thought of his homeworld, on the outer fringes of the human diaspora, as yet raw and unfinished

and needing so much, especially law and order. There—in contrast to this fossilized world—human effort

could still make a difference for the future. But he chopped off an angry retort and put on the insolent

smile he knew was expected of him.

"Hey, some of those thrill-seekers are young and female . . . and you'd be amazed how grateful they can

be for getting rescued! Besides, if memory serves, quitting the Service wasn't purely my idea. Come to

think of it, you were the one who pointed that out to me. I seem to recall words like 'disrespect' and

'flippancy.' "

"True enough. I wasn't too terribly devastated to see you go, nor were certain others in the Authority

whose age and learning and experience you were apt to disparage."

"Then why inflict my bad attitude on yourselves by hauling me back now?"

"I'll not insult your intelligence by claiming to be overjoyed to see you. Indeed, I would not have agreed

to reactivating you had there been any alternative. Oh, and please do take a chair."

"I'd prefer to stand. And why is there no alternative to me?" Jason leaned over Rutherford's desk and

made himself be reasonable and even ingratiating, for he thought he glimpsed a possibility of talking his

way out of this. "Come on, Kyle! What can I possibly contribute that would outweigh the disadvantage

of having someone on the team whose heart isn't in it? You know how I feel about—"

"Yes, I remember your vehemence about the oppressive weight of history that presses down on Earth."

Rutherford took on a look of smug vindication. "Well, then, this is just the mission for you! You're going

to see Earth before most of that history had happened—Earth when it was young. Slightly more than four

thousand years younger than it is at present, in fact."

Without recalling having done it, Jason found that he had sat down. "Would you care to explain that

statement?"

"Certainly." Rutherford leaned forward, and his eyes glowed with an avidity that made him almost

sympathetic. "We want you to lead an expedition to observe the volcanic explosion of Santorini in 1628

B.C. and its aftermath."

All at once, Jason's resentment was forgotten. "What? But . . . how?"

"Yes, I know, it is incomparably further back than we have ever sent humans before. But there have

never been any absolute, theoretical objections to a temporal displacement of this magnitude . . . or any

magnitude, for that matter. The limiting factors have been political and economic. We have, with great

difficulty, obtained authorization for this expedition. It helps that this project lacks the . . . sensitive

aspects of some of our other proposals involving the distant past."

"Right. I remember how you had to quietly drop the idea of an expedition to Jerusalem in the spring of 30

A.D."

"Indeed." Rutherford shuddered at the recollection. "At the same time, the event in question is one of the

most important in human history, and one whose effects are still very much in dispute."

Jason nodded unconsciously. One of the justifications for time travel's hideous expense was the resolution

of historical controversies and mysteries. Written records tended to be incomplete, biased, self-serving or

downright mendacious. Only direct observation could reveal the truth behind the veil of lies, myths,

defamation and propaganda. Already, only half a century after its invention, the Fujiwara-Weintraub

Temporal Displacer had forced historians to rethink much of what they had thought they'd known. And,

in the process, the investigators had been able to establish a trade in items from the past that was so

lucrative it helped defray the cost.

Of course, Jason reflected, they often keep some of the choicest items for themselves. He glanced at

the display case behind Rutherford's desk. A sword caught his eye: a standard-issue early nineteenth

century dragoon saber, somewhat the worse for wear and utterly undistinguished save for the fact that on

a March day in 1836 a certain William Barrett Travis, colonel by dubious virtue of a commission from an

arguably illegal insurrectionist government, had used it to draw a line in the dust of an old Spanish

mission's courtyard in San Antonio, Texas, North America. . . .

Jason dragged his mind back to the matter at hand. "You still haven't explained why you need me, in

particular. I'm not the only one with my qualifications. Almost," he added, because it seemed a shame not

to live down to Rutherford's expectations, "but not quite."

"Two reasons. The first is the perennial problem of physical inconspicuousness. Of all the available

persons with your qualifications—fairly rare ones, as you have indicated with your characteristic

modesty—we feel you are the one with the best chance of passing unremarked in the target milieu."

"Probably true," Jason grudgingly conceded. Most of Earth, for most of its history, had not been as

ethnically cosmopolitan as it had become since the Industrial Revolution. A blond, blue-eyed European in

Ming Dynasty China, or an obvious African in Peter the Great's Russia, would have some explaining to

do. In theory, the capability to alter physical appearances by nanotechnological resequencing of the

genetic code had existed for centuries. But the crazy excesses of the Transhuman movement before its

bloody suppression had placed that sort of thing beyond the pale of acceptability. The Service had to

make do with what it had. For this part of the world, what it had were people like Jason, who looked as

Greek as his name sounded, even though he was—like most living humans, and practically all the

outworld ones—a walking bouillabaisse of national origins.

"Secondly," Rutherford continued, "the sheer, unprecedented magnitude of this temporal

displacement—more than three times as far back as we have ever attempted to send humans, in

fact—limits the mass which can be displaced, and therefore restricts us to a numerically small expedition."

Jason gave another nod of unconscious agreement. The tradeoff was axiomatic.

"In point of fact, we are limited to three people. The matters we wish to observe involve at least two

entirely separate fields of knowledge. Therefore two members of the team must be specialists. This

leaves only one position—that of mission leader—for a generalist. So that person must be a recognized

expert in survival under unique and sometimes unanticipated conditions, with a proven record of

resourcefulness." Rutherford paused, then resumed with an obvious effort. "Doubtless it was for these

very qualities that the Hesperian Rangers found you valuable."

Jason didn't even notice Rutherford's inept best effort at flattery. His mind was too busy running through

the difficulties. "But . . . this is crazy! What about language? Do we even know what they were speaking

then, much less how it sounded?"

"That problem has, of course, been taken into account. I will go into more detail later, for you and the

other members of the team." Rutherford's eyes took on a shrewd twinkle. "Aren't you interested in

knowing who they are?"

"Not particularly."

Taking the absence of outright refusal as emphatic agreement, Rutherford manipulated controls on his

desk. A holographically projected three-dimensional viewscreen appeared in the middle of the air. It

showed a woman's face—a high-cheekboned face of classical regularity framed by long straight hair of a

very dark auburn. Large green eyes gazed out from beneath straight dark brows. The nose was a

graceful aquiline curve. The wide, rather full-lipped mouth wore an expression that was cool almost to the

point of severity.

Jason sat up straight and stared. All at once, this job seemed more interesting.

"Deirdre Sadaka-Ramirez," said Rutherford. "A recognized expert in geology and vulcanology. And very

experienced in fieldwork on her homeworld of Mithras."

Jason's pleasurable speculations hit a bump. Well, now I understand the severity, he thought.

The third planet of Zeta Tucanae had been settled early, during the era of slower-than-light colonization

before the invention of the negative-mass drive. The colonists had been very much on their own when

they'd discovered that the planet held unsuspected autochthones. Whether or not the nightmarish beings

had been truly intelligent was still a subject of learned debate. What was beyond debate was the

insensate ferocity with which they had sought the extirpation of the bipedal invaders from space. (The fact

that the terraforming project was making their world uninhabitable for them might have had something to

do with it.) The human species' survival on Mithras had hung by a thread, and women had not been

expendable. An entire ethos had grown up around the necessity for protecting them, leading to a

resurrection of nearly forgotten social attitudes. That had been a couple of centuries ago, and Mithras

was now part of the general cosmopolitan culture. But even today, women from that world still had a

reputation for aggressively—sometimes abrasively—asserting an equality that, in the larger human

society, had long ago passed beyond the need for assertion.

Well, thought Jason with an inward sigh, I always did like a challenge.

Rutherford fiddled with the controls again, and a new face appeared—a far less interesting one, from

Jason's standpoint. Male, gaunt-featured . . . and definitely middle-aged.

"Wait a minute—" Jason began.

Rutherford overrode him. "Dr. Sidney Nagel—quite possibly Earth's premier living authority on the

history and archaeology of the Aegean Bronze Age, despite his relative youth."

" 'Relative youth'? He's—"

"I am aware that he is somewhat older than most people we send back in time to primitive milieus. But

we have assured ourselves that he will be up to the hardships involved. He met all our health and fitness

requirements." Rutherford smiled. "He had incentive to do so, after a career spent trying to resolve

mysteries by educated guesswork and inferences from a heartbreakingly few hard facts. Offered an

opportunity to actually see the era . . . well, he would have been willing to sell his soul to the Devil for it,

in an age when such things were thought possible. Nowadays, he was willing to undergo a hard regimen

of physical conditioning, and pass our standard training course in low-technology survival."

Jason studied the image. There was something to be said for that kind of motivation. And yet, as he

looked at the professorial face with its humorless mouth and dark-brown eyes flanking a substantial beak

of a nose, he found himself thinking: A Rutherford in training.

"I suppose," he said aloud, "that neither of them knows anything about time travel."

"Well, I imagine they know what the average well-informed layman knows, from the popular literature on

the subject."

"Which means they know nothing," said Jason dourly.

"I am counting on you to repair that lack."

"Me? But you've got all the top experts working for you." Jason shifted in his chair.

"Experts tend to stupefy the listener with technical jargon and unnecessary detail. Certain unkind persons

have even accused me of this sort of behavior. An introduction from someone whose knowledge is of a

practical nature, acquired in the field, might be more useful."

"Some sense in that." Agreeing with Rutherford caused Jason physical pain.

"In fact," Rutherford continued, on a rising note of self-satisfaction, "you can begin their orientation at

once."

"What? You mean they're here in Athens?"

"I thought it well to bring them here, in anticipation that you would wish to meet your team members

without delay." Rutherford stood up. "Shall I send for them?"

For an instant, Jason's resentment came roaring back in full force. His mouth almost opened to tell

Rutherford where to put this mission, to declare that he would legally contest the Service's right to order

him into the past. . . .

The past when—how did Rutherford put it?—Earth was young. Jason's eyes strayed to the

Acropolis. I wonder what was there then?

And besides, Deirdre Sadaka-Ramirez did look awfully intriguing. . . .

"Well, I don't suppose it could hurt to talk to them."

Rutherford smiled and spoke into a grille on his desktop. "Please ask them to come in."

Chapter Two

Please be seated," Rutherford told them as they entered. "Permit me to introduce Commander Jason

Thanou, your mission leader." He was on his best behavior, giving Jason his Rangers rank and even

pronouncing his surname correctly. ("Thane-oh," not "Than-ooh.") He then proceeded to introduce the

new arrivals, which was redundant but which gave Jason a chance to study them.

Deirdre Sadaka-Ramirez wasn't quite as tall as he'd imagined from her face, which was probably just as

well from the standpoint of blending into the Bronze Age population. She wasn't short, though, and her

figure was a solidly constructed hourglass. The latter was obvious even in the no-nonsense jumpsuit she

was wearing—maroon, which complemented her coloring. She gave Jason a brief smile of measured

cordiality.

Dr. Nagel was very much as per expectations, aside from being somewhat stockier than his sharp

features suggested. His consciously old-fashioned, expensively fusty clothing was the uniform of

academia. Jason noted a tightening of his thin lips at Rutherford's use of the term "mission leader." As

soon after the introductions as politeness permitted—or perhaps just slightly sooner than that—he turned

to Rutherford, ignoring Jason.

"I say, Kyle, given my credentials in Aegean Bronze Age studies, surely it should be myself who—"

"No, Sidney. I remind you of the Articles of Agreement you signed with the Temporal Regulatory

Authority."

"Well, er, yes, I seem to recall some legalistic boilerplate. But I naturally assumed that it didn't apply in

Steve White - Blood of the Heroes

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