Andre Norton - Time Traders 6 - Echoes In Time

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Echoes in Time by
Andre Norton and
Sherwood Smith
PROLOGUE
THE DAY'S HEAT had diminished to only a residual shimmer from the
cooling earth. The chitter and click of insects in the scrubby green brush
formed a kind of musical accompaniment to the laughing and singing of
the long, snaking line of children crouched together, one in front of the
other, knees up near their chins.
"Here is our mother!
Our mother, our mother!
Here is our harvest,
Our fruit, our harvest!
Our mother, our fruit…"
The children laughed as they sang, their bare toes scrabbling forward
in the dust as they waddled and hopped. Their dark brown skin was
mottled and streaked with painted patterns, some chalk-white, others
subtle earth tones. Sweat and dust marred the fine lines of the patterns,
not that the children cared. They were only playing. They sang and
laughed with the companionable abandon of children who know that the
time for real skin painting, when they became adults with adult
responsibilities for food and shelter, war and marriage, lay far in the
sunny future, after many harvest games such as this.
Saba Mariam, watching from her post beside a jumble of rocks, felt as
if she had been wafted back through time. So the children of the Surma
had played and sang for countless generations in this sere mountain
region of southwest Ethiopia.
She looked down at her hands, the skin dark against the plain khaki of
her trousers. She and her recorder were the only jarring notes in this scene
out of history, the only intrusion of modernity—though at any time an
airplane might roar overhead, causing children and adults alike to pause,
like startled deer, before they scampered off to hide.
Saba glanced at her tape recorder, working silently behind a warm gray
boulder. The Surma tolerated her strange ways because she did not
interfere with them, and she had proved that she was not in fact sent by
their age-old enemies, the Bumi. She looked strange to men and women
alike, with her ears and lips unpierced. She was, to the Surma, a child
walking around in a grown body, for she did not display the ritual
markings of a responsible adult, but they dismissed her strangeness with a
kind of humorous tolerance.
Saba had learned to sit quietly, patiently, drawing no attention to
herself. After her long stretches of neutral observance, she knew that the
people would forget her presence. She would become no more interesting
than another boulder, or a patch of scrubby grass, and it was then that she
turned on the recorder, making a record of music that had been handed
down through families over centuries and centuries of time.
It was good work. Important work. Saba was proud to be one of many
who quietly went about recording the songs and myths that had sustained
human beings since the cradle of civilization. Progress had brought to the
Earth untold advantages, but its pervasive growth was choking off in
ever-increasing numbers the very old languages, customs, and cultures of
peoples who had lived in harmony with the land since humans first
crossed the great continents.
It was indeed important work, Saba thought as one very small
three-year-old tripped and went rolling in the dust. The song broke up
into laughter. The children reformed into their line; one girl at the front
began singing again, soon joined by the others, as in the distance a group
of mothers and young unmarried women chattered and prepared food.
Important work—and involving work. It kept one busy, which in its
turn prevented one from worrying about those things that could not be
solved—
As she thought this, she became aware of a sound that perhaps had
warned her subliminally of approaching intrusions.
The faint hum, reminiscent of bees bumbling around flowers, resolved
into a battered old motorcycle drawing a three-wheeled side car. The rusty
machine was probably older than Saba herself.
The children heard it as well. For a moment they all went still, and then
their leader dashed through the dust to her mother. The other children
followed, some still laughing, others singing bits of song. The mothers
gathered their young and vanished into the sun-dried brush.
Saba climbed up on a boulder and shaded her eyes against the great,
bloodred late October sun. The driver of the motorcycle revved the engine
and zoomed around brush and scraggly trees, halting two meters from
Saba's rocks.
Saba held her breath as the wafting odors of petrol and exhaust blew
past, so unfamiliar after her month here in the wild mountainous region.
The driver, meanwhile, pulled off sunglasses and a tight baseball cap,
shaking free a cloud of curling brown hair. The clothing—tough,
anonymous bush garb—had made gender difficult to guess at; a gloved
hand pulled out a kerchief and mopped some of the dust and grit from a
middle-aged female face as Saba approached.
The driver looked up, shoving the kerchief into a pocket. "La Professeur
Mariam? Vous etes Saba Mariam?" she asked.
Saba nodded, adding in French, "Is there an emergency?"
"Oui" French was obviously no more the driver's native tongue than it
was Saba's, but Saba had gotten used to polyglot conversations—often in
tongues chosen because possible surrounding listeners would not
understand the conversation. Not that any listeners were around now.
The woman said, "Je m'appelle Taski Aleyescoglu. Je suis avec L'Etoile
Projet."
Project Star.
For a moment Saba stood staring at the unfamiliar woman, angry at
this breach of promise.
L'Etoile Projet—Project Star—was the bland name for one of the most
secret organizations in the world, one for which Saba had given her
strength, her spirit, and nearly her life.
Saba turned her gaze on the Time Agent courier. "I was promised a
year," she said in French. "A year to recover."
"It is an emergency," Agent Aleyescoglu replied.
"Answer me this first: has Lisette Al-Aseer reported in?"
The Time Agent did not pretend to not know the name. Her lips
pressed into a line, and she shook her head. "I am sorry, Professor
Mariam."
Saba drew a deep breath. "And they expect me to cut short my recovery
time? And return?"
The agent said, "Whatever is going on is classified over my head—as is
whatever your former partner is still working on. All I was told was to find
you and bring you back. Whatever it is that has them scrambling now,
apparently only you can solve it."
Saba turned her gaze to the last limb of the sun, sinking beyond the
western peaks. Shadows blended softly now, making it difficult to see the
woman's face. If she was to leave, she'd have to go now; they were miles
from any road, and driving about at night in Ethiopia in the dark was no
simple matter.
She looked back. "Me as a musicologist?"
"You as you. That's all I was told: it must be you, it can be no other
person."
Strange. But time travel was strange, that Saba knew. Strange, alien,
and even more remorseless than the natural passage of time.
She looked over the distant clumps of trees, knowing that the Surma
crouched there, and she smiled sadly to herself. All very well to fancy that
she had stepped back in time while recording these people celebrating the
year's harvest. Apparently she was to be drawn back into real time travel,
in a machine designed and built by beings never born on Earth. How
many agents had been lost in the quest to understand this technology
from beyond the stars?
She shook her head.
"Can you tell me at least where this emergency is taking place?"
"I wasn't told. Of course," Taski said, settling onto the motorcycle and
pulling on her goggles. "But when I was on my way out, I overheard an
order for someone to contact the American Embassy for your visa."
"New York! So this new emergency involves the Americans?" Saba
shook her head. She knew that Project Star had originated with the
United States, but so far her connection with the Americans had been
peripheral at best.
Taski grinned as she yanked the baseball cap over her forehead. "Big
boss will probably be out here next, and you can ply him with all the
questions you like."
Saba sat back on her rock. "If there is so urgent a need," she said, "why
did he not come here instead of you?"
Taski revved the engine, which roared, sending some distant birds
flapping skyward from the shrubs. Their cries echoed back, faint as the
laughter of children, as the motor died down to an uneven growl.
"Might have," Taski called. "But he's still in Mother Russia."
Russia?
Saba mouthed the word, but did not speak. In amazement—and
apprehension—she gazed at the courier, who gave her a careless salute,
revved the engine once more, then drove off into the twilight, leaving a
cloud of light brown dust hanging in the still air.
Russia? And the Americans? Could there be a connection?
She might not have been able to conquer her bitterness, but one thing
she had learned was patience.
Saba bent over the recorder, pressed the ON button, then settled back
to wait for the Surma to emerge, like shy ghosts, from the shelter of the
brush.
"VIKHODITE! RUKI V' VERKH!"
"Like hell I'll come out with my hands up." Mikhail Petrovich Nikulin
smashed the butt of his pistol into a corner of window, and stuck the
muzzle through the hole. Bitter Siberian air smote his sweaty face.
Two things happened almost at once.
From behind came a shout: "Nikulin! You know the orders!"
From outside the rickety old building came the Match! and click!s as
two of the half-hidden gangsters dropped bullets into the chambers of
their rifles.
Phwup. A large-calibre bullet burrowed into the half-frozen slush just
below Misha's window, kicking up splatters of mud.
Footsteps from behind. A moment later a short, darkhaired figure
crouched below the level of the windowsill. "Nikulin!"
Misha did not have to look down; he knew that voice, and he knew the
expression on the older man's face.
"You know the orders. No violence. If we have to, we activate the
destruction device on the ship," Gaspardin said.
White hot anger flared through Misha Nikulin. "We are not going to
lose that ship," he stated, his gaze staying on the figures in the bulky coats
creeping foward from the cars to the old stone fence.
He fired once, and heard a shouted curse. Outside, one of the gangsters
flung up his weapon and dropped, rolling in the muddy slush, hand
clasped around his wounded knee.
"Misha—"
On the periphery of his vision Nikulin saw Gaspardin reach up for his
pistol. "Don't touch me."
The hand vanished. "You will answer to the Colonel for contravening
orders."
"If that ship is blown up, she will answer to me," Misha said, and again
he fired, winging a second figure in the arm.
The trefoil flicker of automatic weapons fire glowed outside, and all
around Misha wood splintered. Glass shattered and rained down in a
musical tinkle. He dropped to the dusty wooden floor and belly-crawled,
not back to the inner room, as Gaspardin did, but to the kitchen annex,
where he'd stashed an old wartime teargas pistol.
As the furious automatic fire stitched across the weatherworn,
dilapidated building, Misha loaded the pistol with a teargas cannister,
used the butt to knock out a corner of the brittle glass, and then took aim.
He fired into the midst of the attackers. Heard choked, angry cries. A
whiff of teargas drifted on the cold air, making him sneeze, just as raking
bullets smashed into the antique ceramic oven, sending out a lethal spray
of shards.
Warmth creased Misha's ribs. He ignored it. Steadied his grip. Shot a
second time, then flung aside the tear gas weapon and picked up his
pistol. Dropped the magazine. Checked to see if it still had ammunition.
Slid the magazine home and jacked a round into the chamber.
He kept crawling from place to place, forcing himself to make each shot
count, until the roaring outside grew louder than the roar in his ears.
The shooting had ceased. He leaned against a window, glanced outside,
and realized the gangsters had retreated to their vehicles and roared away.
Misha stared through the window, trying to make sense of the endless
gray Siberian sky meeting the distant horizon. But it didn't make sense.
Nothing made sense except the fact that the mission was safe. The alien
ship was safe.
"… realize it, don't you?"
Misha looked over his shoulder, made out in the swiftly gathering
darkness Gaspardin's anger-narrowed eyes, his mouth white in his
grizzled jowls.
"You defied orders," Gaspardin repeated. Then his expression changed
as his gaze worked down Misha's shirt.
Misha glanced down, but all he saw were billowing clouds of darkness.
He lifted his free hand to his side, and felt the wet warmth there.
"Damn," he said, and slid into the darkness.
HE WOKE STARING up at a low sod ceiling. He smelled generations of
cabbage and potato meals and unwashed wool. Heard the creak of a chair.
"So you are awake, young man." That voice belonged to Colonel
Vasilyeva. Misha turned his head, saw her sitting by a narrow window set
into the thick stone wall. Through the window he glimpsed hayricks, and
the long white Russian sky. He knew this place; it was the fallback position
for their team, in case of disaster. His hand lifted to his ribs, encountered
a taped bandage there.
He said, finding his throat dry, "The mission is safe."
"No thanks to you."
The Colonel's face was calm, her gaze unwavering. Like others who had
spent childhood under the shadow of Stalin, she seemed to have no
emotions whatsoever.
Misha knew that was wrong.
He said, "The ship?"
"It is safe enough. Now." Her voice was as immovable as granite. When
she was angry, her demeanor carried all the force of a rockslide. "But that
will not be the case if any of your victims die, and the government turns its
attention back on us."
Misha fought against blinding anger, and winced as he moved restlessly
on the bed.
"If," she stated in a low, soft voice, "I give orders for that alien ship to
be destroyed, it will be done."
Misha gritted his teeth and forced himself to sit up against the wall.
The Colonel went on, "They were just a bunch of opportunists, there to
take over the energy plant, and use it for some easy piracy by price
gouging. They had no idea that we are time agents, and that we have an
alien ship. And of course they are going to come back, in bigger numbers.
We have to make certain that what they find will be a hydroelectric plant.
Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing," she said in a slow, cold voice, "to
raise questions."
"I'm sorry," Misha said at last, though it cost him more effort than
sitting up had.
The Colonel sat back, one blunt hand working at her temples as if she
had a headache. If one were to interpret that gesture as weakness, that
would be equally wrong.
"The Americans have a ship," she said. "We are now allied with them.
The Germans have a ship. The French have a ship, as do the Norwegians,
and Africans. May I remind you, Mikhail Petrovich, that these are all our
allies now? The Time Agency is worldwide. This mission will be carried
through, even if one of us loses a ship."
Misha shook his head, then winced as corresponding pain racketed
through his skull. "I'm sorry. I just don't believe the Americans are going
to help. Or if they do, what their price is going to be."
"None of us know," the Colonel said. "My entire life I have not trusted
them, but necessity forces change. You forced it sooner than I would have
wished."
Misha winced.
The Colonel said, "Our people should be finishing up at the energy plant
right now. Then on their way to St. Petersburg to get ready for the
journey." She dropped her hands to her knees. "None of us trust the
Americans. But balanced against that is the reality of our government
struggling to survive, and the unrest so very close. No one must find out
about these alien artifacts—either the ships or the time-travel
mechanisms. You know that as well as I. Rather than let anyone find out,
anyone at all, we blow up the ship—we blow ourselves up. These secrets
cannot fall into the wrong hands. Every single government who knows the
secrets agrees. And so necessity forces us all to compromise. To work
together. To solve the mysteries we've been presented, before we find
ourselves with bigger problems from outside our gravity well than we're
causing for one another within it."
She sat back.
Misha sighed, presing his hand against his side. It hurt. "The mission?"
"The flight to New York leaves tomorrow. We begin the training there."
Lightning flared behind Misha's eyes. He strugged up, made it to his
feet. "I'm going," he said, not caring that his voice broke. "Get me on that
flight."
"But the doctor—"
"I don't care. I will be on that mission, if I have to blast my way across
eight time zones to do it. And you know I never make empty threats."
They stared at one another.
"Zina." He relented at last. "Please."
The Colonel's lips creased. Just faintly.
Misha sank down onto the hay-stuffed bed. The effort of standing had
made him dizzy. But that no longer mattered. He knew he'd won.
"We will leave tomorrow," she said, "but without you. As soon as your
fever is down, you will follow us." She pointed at the bed. "Now get some
sleep." The door shut behind her.
CHAPTER 1
THE PHONE RANG. Ross Murdock looked up, startled.
For a moment his eyes met his wife's across the room. Eveleen paused
in the act of patting down the folded tablecloth on the basket they'd both
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