Crawford Killian - The Empire of Time

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The Empire of Time by

Crawford Kilian

Chapter One

The intertemporal shuttle between Earth/ 2015 and Beulah/1804 was an old

subway train. For decades, its three cars had carried passengers on the old IRT

line up and down Manhattan; now they sat on a hundred-meter strip of track in a

tunnel in Flushing, on the basement level of the New York Transferpoint

Building. Twice every hour, the I-Screen was turned on at the end of the runnel,

and the three cars rumbled through the screen toward an identical tunnel on

Beulah. The cars were painted in Agency blue and white, and defaced by

emigrants' graffiti, scratched, chalked, inked, and sprayed on every surface:

LOIS & BILL, JAN. 27, 2015. BACKSLIDERS RULE. AID is NO HELP. 1804

OR BUST. The Agency for Intertemporal Development did not care; these were,

after all, the parting shots of people who would no longer be a nuisance.

Jerry Pierce was one of the few passengers coming uptime on the shuttle, but

over a hundred people were waiting on the shuttle platform for the trip back.

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Some were emigrants, dressed in blue-and-white Agency-issue fatigues and

clutching their shabby luggage. Most, however, were Trainables on official

business: civil servants, technicians, and scholars. Some ostentatiously wore

flickreaders pushed up on their foreheads, like sunglasses, as if their civilian

clothes and attaché cases were not enough to proclaim their privileged status.

The shuttle came through the Screen and screeched to a halt. Pierce was the first

one off. He announced nothing. In his dusty buckle shoes, knee breeches, and

tailcoat, he looked like a visiting endochronic— possibly a senior bureaucrat in

President Jefferson's administration, traveling to the twenty-first century to beg

favors from the Agency. He ignored the Trainables' patronizing smiles—and the

emigrants' sullen stares— as he handed his suitcase to a porter and shot his cuff,

flashing his wrist ID.

"Seventy-second floor, please. Apartment 72006."

"Yes, sir!" The porter was impressed. All apartments above the seventieth floor

were reserved for top Agency staff. Pierce tipped the porter and started down the

long platform to the escalators.

As he took his fifth step, time seemed to stop. Pierce's perceptions heightened

and intensified, as if he had Just undergone some impossible quintupling of

sensory-input synthesis. He could pick out individual conversations amid the

gabble and shuffle of a hundred people, but everyone was speaking so slowly

that their words made no sense. A dozen different scents swirled around him.

Pierce noted that exactly nine small tiles were missing from the abstract mosaic

that covered the tunnel walls. He was aware of the temperature difference

between his ankles and his face, and estimated it correctly at 2°C. The

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holoposters set into the walls blazed mindlessly at him:

WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT DOOMSDAY?

THERE'S A FUTURE FOR YOU in THE COLONIAL POLICE!

LEVY'S RYE—THE TOAST OF TWELVE CHRONOPLANES WHAT ARE

YOU DOING ABOUT DOOMSDAY?

Nothing moved.

Pierce was frightened, but observed the phenomenon with an Agent's Trained

dispassion. Here was a "freeze" —an occupational hazard of Trainable Agents

after years of psychoconditioning. Its onset meant the Trainable's usefulness was

nearing its end.

Almost twenty years, he thought I must be due for it. But this is just the first

freeze; I could go for years without experiencing another one. I'm thirty-five;

another two or three years left, anyway. An image of a cabin on the California

coast, or on Thel or Ahania or even all the way back to Tharmas, flashed through

his mind—a cabin with apricot and cherry trees around it: The stereotypical

retirement for a used-up Agent. He would go mad with boredom. But some

Agents went a whole lifetime without freezing. Wigner. Well, he's only thirty-

nine, and he's got himself insulated. The bastard could spend half his time frozen

solid in his office, and no one would know.

The freeze was wearing off. Down the platform, Pierce saw a young man

approaching him, and worried. Had he noticed anything? The freeze could not

have lasted more than a second or two; the young man could not have noticed.

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Pierce recognized him at once, though they had never met. The young man was a

tall, heavyset, shaggy blond and tailored denims and a white silk shirt; an agate

bolo tie glinted under his short beard. He was Philon Richardson, a Trainable

Climber from Los, born 985 BC in Thrace, of Dorian stock. Tested four years

ago at age sixteen, and brought uptime with his equally Trainable sister for his

education. Took his Trainer's family name, as did most Climbers. Under Philon's

foppish appearance was still a hint of the arrogant warrior-thug he would have

become if the Agency had not tapped him: a barbarian princeling, carousing in

the ruins of Nestor's palace. Instead, he had become a twenty-first-century

organization man—an errand boy now—but he was destined to wield more

power with his fichewriter than his father ever dreamed of wielding with a

sword. Still, it was interesting that anything at all was left of Philon's

background. The psychoconditioners knew then- job.

They greeted each other with a nod. Accustomed to high-speed data acquisition

through the flickreader, Trainables found normal speech tedious; among

themselves they spoke elliptically, or else imbued normal speech with irony and

ambiguity. On this occasion, as relative strangers surrounded by a crowd of

unTrainables, courtesy dictated the latter form of speech.

"Good morning, Mr. Pierce. Welcome home."

"Good morning, Philon. Thank you; it's good to be back."

They strolled through the crowd to the escalators. The only lingering effect of

the freeze, so far as Pierce could tell, was a slight euphoria.

"Wigner must be eager to see me."

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"Very eager, Mr. Pierce."

"Too bad. I was hoping to catch up on my sleep before reporting in."

Philon smiled sympathetically and made amiable small talk: the clammy New

York winter weather, the latest Agency gossip, the nasty new flu virus that had

slipped in from one of the Paleolithic chronoplanes and taken 150,000 lives in

the past month, mostly in the slums of Rio, Sao Paulo, and Asuncion. Pierce said

little, nodding absently.

They ascended the escalator to the Transferpoint Concourse, a circular roofed

plaza 250 meters in diameter. The main exit led outside to New York,

Earth/2015. The other exits, spaced around the plaza's circumference and marked

by glowing holoposters, led to:

New-York, Beulah/1804; Vikingshaven, Eden/1180; Port Palisades, Ahania/107;

Chronoport, Los/965 BC; Ishizawa City, Albion/8127 BC; Glaciopolis,

Ore/12,165 BC; Simpsonville, Luvah/22,233 BC; Johnson Station,

Urthona/26,991 BC; Hudson Valley, Vala 34,468 BC; Welcome, Thel/47,114

BC; Lindsay City, Thannas/70,787 BC.

There were, of course, no shuttles to Ulro/2239 or Urizen/3571. The dead worlds

uptime were visited only through special I-Screens by highly trained scavengers

who darted into the ruined cities seeking clues to the nature of Doomsday.

Thousands poured through the Concourse. Philon and Pierce ignored them as

they headed for the elevators to the upper floors of the Transferpoint Building.

They stepped alone into the VIP elevator, and Philon inserted a key into the

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control panel. He pressed 112: Operations Division, Wigner's floor. The doors

sighed shut, and Pierce sank into one of the easy chairs, stretching his long legs.

He smiled tiredly at Philon, who smiled back and remained standing.

"You're new with the Agency, aren't you?"

"That's right, sir. I've been with the Director's Office about a month now. It's a

good place to work."

"And how long have you been on Earth?"

Philon's smile faded a little. To continue normal speech in private was proper

enough between one of Pierce's rank and one of Philon's, but it was rude to ask

about what should already be known.

"Three years. My sister and I were Tested in '06 and brought uptime in '07. She's

interning now in a hospital in Montevideo. As I suppose you know." He had

spelled it all out—a counterinsult.

"How does she like it? Better than being the property of some asshole in a

bronze jockstrap, hey?"

Philon watched the floor numbers flashing above the door. "Hmm," he replied.

He did not like having his endochronic background thrown in his face. Such

rudeness was to be expected from Backsliders, un-Trainables who were being

crowded off Earth to make room for Climbers like himself, but for a Senior Field

Agent to talk this way was too much.

Pierce was wryly aware of the reasons for his deliberate discourtesy. Philon

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reminded him of himself at twenty: an apprentice hatchetman, pleasantly aware

of his elite status but not yet experienced enough to begin to doubt the value of

his job. Something else about the young Dorian also bothered him, but he

couldn't identify it. A slight kinesic tension, a glint of hostility in the respectful

smile. He had seen it many times, usually in men preparing to try to kill him. But

in Philon such tension made no sense. Let it pass: an aftereffect, no doubt, of the

freeze.

The door opened, and Pierce stood up.

"After you, Philon."

"That's all right, I'm going on up to one twenty-one. Glad to have met you, Mr.

Pierce. I hope we'll meet again soon." Pierce waved a vague good-bye, and

walked into Wigner's outer office. For some reason, he did not entirely relax

until the elevator doors had closed behind him.

Floor 112 had for Pierce a pleasant air of lived-in luxury: good teak tables with

coffee rings marring their elegant surfaces; some early Booth cartoons, originals,

tacked on official bulletin boards; thick Danish carpets a bit overdue for

cleaning. Two dozen clerks, men and women, were running floods of data

through the flickertube terminals evenly spaced around the large main office.

The meter-square screens shimmered with a dozen colors, like high-speed

kaleidoscopes. The clerks were dressed in overalls, chitons, jeans, brocade robes;

their only common denominators seemed to be youth and a passion for

houseplants, which adorned the terminals like ivy on gravestones.

Holograms glowed on most walls and partitions: second-century Rome from the

air; the scrub forests of the Dogger Plain, where the Thames and Rhine merged

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and flowed north to the Norwegian Bight on Tharmas; a twelfth-century

Buddhist monk in Kyoto, all jolliness and wrinkles; a Paleo-Indian band

celebrating a good hunt in an Albionese Arizona swamp. The pictures had all

been taken by the staff of Floor 112, while vacationing; working Field Agents

had no time for travelogue holography.

There were no windows on Floor 112. The Operations Division was interested

only in the worlds downtime whose affairs it guided, and in the worlds uptime

whose fate it sought to escape.

Pierce walked up to Judy Willems, Wigner's staff coordinator.

"Married yet?" A running gag between them, and all the greeting he needed to

give her.

"Not yet." A dazzling smile. She was twenty-four and very good-looking. No

lipstick or breast powder —she needed no cosmetics—and her dark tan and thick

yellow hair were nicely set off by her warm-gold sarong. "Pooped?"

"Mph."

"Dinner tonight?"

"My place or yours?" Another running gag.

"Mine. The squalor you live in makes me want to wash dishes and scrub floors."

"Atavist! When?"

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"Oh—1930ish."

"Why not earlier?"

"You won't be through until 1800; you have an all-day appointment with Dr.

Suad."

"Oh boy. How can Wigner send me out again when I've just got back? What's

up?"

She shrugged. "Something to do with Colonials. I don't know the details." He

could tell, though, that she knew enough to make her nervous.

"Christ. Rather deal with endos." He shrugged too. "Tell him I'm here."

Eric Wigner's office, at first glance, could have belonged to an Agency Librarian

(Grade 6). It was windowless, rather small, and cluttered with computer

cartridges, microfiche cards, and the inevitable houseplants; Wigner seemed to

be particularly fond of piggyback plants, grape ivy, and maidenhair fern. Then

one noticed his century-old rolltop desk, the shelves filled with genuine

hardcover books (including a first edition of 1984), the battered couch covered

with real leather, and realized that one was indeed dealing with the Agency's

Permanent Deputy for Operations, a man who could found or topple empires,

and often did.

Pierce walked in, kicked off his shoes, and collapsed on the couch. "What is this

shit?"

Wigner tilted back in his swivel chair and put his slippered feet up on the desk.

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He grinned through his bushy gray mustache. He was a middle-sized man, bald,

pink-cheeked, and physically unimpressive. Pierce was some fifteen centimeters

taller, and had the physique of a racing-shell oarsman, but there was no question

who was boss.

"It's always the same shit," Wigner replied. He chose normal speech, and even

inflated it slightly. "When I heard about this problem, Jerry, I asked myself: Who

among my many fine Senior Field Agents has the brains, the guts, the

determination for this arduous and demanding assignment? Those were my exact

words. And of course the answer was you."

"How so?"

"In a minute. Tell me about Brother Thomas."

Pierce pulled a cassette from his breast pocket and scaled it across the office.

Wigner caught it with startling quickness.

"All on tape. The meeting went pretty well. Domestic politics: he wanted to

switch some Agency funds from medicare to highways and transport. A lot of

his people are unhappy about equal medical treatment for Black and Indian kids.

They really resent it when Testing time comes and we take just as many Blacks

and Indians as whites—"

"Some of whom will later come back to Beulah as Trained administrators."

"They do hate to see those Blacks using flickreaders and telling 'em not to pee in

the soup."

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