Where Time Winds Blow, page 13
“I sent him out, you see. I sent him out when I knew it was unsafe. There hadn’t been a full scale wind for weeks, but there was a spate of squalls, sweeping the valley; totally unpredictable. Quick, clean, the flash of an eye. They often herald a major wind, and there were structures appearing in the valley that were lasting only a few hours before vanishing again. I wanted so desperately to see everything, to get a glimpse of everything that was time-flung. I sent a lot of men out, and most of them did an hour in the rift, then fled. Mark was a strong-willed man, and he behaved by the book. I told him to go out, and he went out, and when the wind came he was stuck … he got caught.” Ensavlion glanced at Kris, his face white, his eyes dim behind tired lids. “There was nothing anyone could do. I’m convinced of that. There was nothing. Please believe me. If your brother could have been saved, then, as I’m sure you know, he would have been. I’m sure you know that …” He was staring at Kris queerly, a steady gaze, now, a searching stare. He wanted comment from the boy. He wanted his psyche patted better, a kind word, a forgiving gesture.
Kris, comprehending that it was unfair of him, nonetheless did not feel that he wanted to put Ensavlion at his ease. He could scarcely credit that this trembling, weak, fearful man before him was his Section Commander, and the leader of the mission that had brought Mark seven hundred light years to participate in; and which had brought Kris himself along the same interstellar route to join in place of his brother.
He said, “I’m sure everything was done that could have been done. I don’t understand your feeling of failure.”
Ensavlion paced awkwardly in front of the seated youth. “He knew I was wrong to order him out. But he went out, him and others … I forget exactly who, now. Afterwards we tried to forget about it, to put it from our minds. I had no cares for his safety, but he never found the words, or the disobedience, to correct my instruction.”
“That’s a mistake of war, Commander. Every Commander is responsible for the life and death of his men, but it isn’t as if you stuck a knife in him. You were wrong, and my brother was caught off-guard; if I was convinced he was dead it might make me more bitter towards you. But he’s not dead. I know he’s not.”
Ensavlion laughed in a way that suggested relief (at the change of subject, perhaps) and just a little appreciation of Kris’s dogmatic adherence to what must surely have been a lost cause.
“You mean the wizened phantom of the valley … well, I appreciate your enthusiasm, and your imagination, but you really should start to think—”
Kris cut in. “Not the phantom. Not the phantom … I know that now, and I realize I was wrong, and I’m angry at myself for being wrong. Not the phantom …” he touched the amulet about his neck, drawing reassurance from its cold, smooth feel; Ensavlion followed the minute motion with his eyes. “Not the phantom, but something the phantom said … I know my brother is alive. But whether I can find him is another question.”
Kris was amused by the expression of shock that touched the otherwise dull and expressionless features of his Section Commander. Ensavlion pushed himself away from the tv unit, his hands behind his back. Dramatically he turned round, peered down at Kris. “Are you telling me you’ve spoken to this person?”
“Not exactly spoken. Exchanged shouts, snatches of words, sentences. A rather unforthcoming piece of time flotsam, the phantom. Enough exchanged, though, for me to shed a tear or two, one for grief, one for joy. What I sensed about the phantom was not the actual identity of my brother, but the transmission of that identity. When I was on Oster’s Fall, my home world, when we got news of Mark’s death, I had already been dreaming of him, and when the news came I dreamed harder. I heard him speaking, I’m convinced of it. It was something similar when I first came here. There were moments when I felt Mark calling to me, desperately loudly. He was alive, but trapped. The phantom was relaying that telepathy—”
“Telepathy?”
“Or whatever. I appreciate my senses, Commander. I don’t try and constrain them with reason. If I smell something I smell it, I don’t start questioning whether I smell it in my nose or my olfactory lobe, or even whether I’ve smelled it at all, but rather am smelling something because of a visual association working subconsciously. If something stinks, it stinks. If something speaks in my mind, it speaks in my mind.” He frowned, then laughed as he noticed Ensavlion’s cynical expression. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m a slave of my sensory input, and I don’t worry about it. It keeps me going, as it has kept many a so-called crank going, through the centuries when people laughed at teleportation—remember that?—and now certain planetary environments enhance that power, right? And through times when people thought that there had never been animal God creatures on Earth, and now there’s been communication with the creatures on Earth, which live out of phase with humanity, the same beings who inspired all those legends and myths, right?” Ensavlion was nodding in agreement, conceding the point. Kris said, “And of course, through times when people scorned time travel.”
Ensavlion’s eyebrows rose slightly. “We still don’t have that, you know. There is nothing to say that the phenomena we are observing in the valley, on VanderZande’s World, are not in fact something else, some perception trick, or spatial orientation trick.”
“Do you believe that? Do you believe in cosmic tricks?”
“No, I don’t,” said Ensavlion, wiping a hand across his face, and smoothing back his hair; he was hot again. “I don’t because I’ve seen them, the causes, the travellers. I’ve seen their machine. But despite what my colleagues say, I am not blind to their argument, and indeed to those who argue against a point blank acceptance that the time winds are time travelling winds.”
Kris felt smug in his special knowledge. “It is time travel, and you are right and they are wrong. I’m convinced of it, and I’ve spoken to someone who has hopped through time with the same ease as you or I might hop into a car. That’s why the Catchwind Mission is so important. That’s why I’m puzzled as to why it hasn’t happened yet.”
“Ah,” Ensavlion turned away again, considering the statement with something akin to embarrassment. “Yes, you are quite right to query that. Your brother was part of the original team, and he was here for some months, and we did not go; and it is months since he disappeared and still we haven’t gone.”
When it seemed that Ensavlion would be content with stating the obvious, Kris prompted, “But I keep seeing men out in the rift. When I was out last night I saw movement. Not the solitary figure that keeps running along the valley’s rim. That’s you, I guess.”
“Me?” Ensavlion smiled. “I do spend rather a lot of time out there, I must confess. But go on, you’ve seen men. Men in rift suits?”
“Of course.”
“Men and women in rift suits, to be precise. That’s the team. Every few days when there is a sort of wind eddy, or dark cloud, or electrical disturbance that sometimes, but not always, is associated with a time wind … out they go. But they would abort the mission without instructions from me.”
“And that’s happened several times.”
Ensavlion looked horrified, then angry. He took a step towards Kris and his face flushed with suppressed rage. Then he smiled grimly, slapping his hands behind his back and looking away. “By God, Mister Dojaan, you’ve been nosing around to an impressive degree. Out on the rift where you oughtn’t to be, not yet, and asking questions that by rights should be unanswerable.”
“Are you angry?”
Ensavlion considered that, calming during the few seconds of silence. “I don’t think I am, now.”
Kris decided that he should tread prudently and pick his words with care. “I thought I might have touched on a sore point. I haven’t been nosing, and that’s the truth. I was talking to one of the Section during my suit-training, and I suppose he divined that I was the new Catchwind recruit. Maybe something I said, or did, or implied, gave it away.”
“Your name, probably.”
“He told me straight that we’re not supposed to talk about the mission, but also that he was part of it. That they’d been waiting for over a year, and they’d always been available when the wind blew, but that you’ve never given the word. And you never explain why. And they’re getting very fed up waiting, which is why there is such a need for replacements.”
Ensavlion watched the boy and hardly a sound was heard, hardly a breath was drawn. Kris felt the terrible imminence of the question, and his heart began to stammer as he wondered what he should say when it came.
“They say, I suppose, that I’m afraid. Commander Ensavlion is scared to death of the mission, and because of his streak of yellow is denying the Universe the possible benefits of the first organized and considered venture into Othertime. Am I right, Kris?”
Kris said nothing, did nothing, but sat in embarrassed silence. “They think you’re scared,” he confirmed after a while. “As if they’re not scared themselves.”
Ensavlion obviously appreciated the softness of that, the generosity. If it was not totally honest on Kris’s part, and if Ensavlion realized this, nothing was said, only, “Everyone’s scared of course, that’s only natural. But those men and women were prepared to risk death; they signed on for the Catchwind mission, and they were prepared to go through with, it, exhausted with fear, damp with fear, sick with fear, they’d nonetheless have done it.”
“Why are you so afraid?” asked Kris, aware, now, that all ice was broken, and that Ensavlion and he had grown closer than was good for two men of such different ranks and such different age; but close they had grown, and there was no denying or escaping it.
The Commander shook his head. “I’ve never fully understood, Kris. One day I watched a time wind … a magnificent sight. I can’t begin to describe it. The most fabulous, the most incomprehensible sight in the whole Universe, an art form so distinct, so natural that it fills me with joy, such joy that I want to sing with that wind, always sing, always become a part of it. And for years I fought, and argued with the Federation, with the financiers, with the governing body of this Sector to allow a ’suicide mission’ into time. I got volunteers and I said it was madness not to send an expedition into Othertime. They always came up with the same argument: no one has returned, and therefore no one will. No information has been received from Othertime, and therefore no information will.”
Kris was momentarily confused. “That makes no sense.”
“I agree. They argued that any successful expedition would indicate a control of the random time-flow in the valley … Do you see what I mean? That time would flow from specific point to specific point, and everyone going into time would follow the same path. If such control existed then men, lost or expeditionary, would have turned up, and been turning up for years …”
“One did.”
Ensavlion laughed. “I don’t think the phantom would have been very good support for our cause. In any event, the council eventually agreed to the formation of a small task force, to be maintained in strict secrecy, everyone working a normal job, and waiting for their say-so, for their word to go. Then, when I saw the pyramid—and I was not alone although I am the only one left alive who saw the travellers—official opinion was swayed sufficiently. I was put in charge of the mission, with full authority to call the task force out into the valley. Secrecy was maintained. After a few weeks the interest in seeking the golden pyramid declined, and I became … I don’t know, a laughing stock perhaps? That wouldn’t be so far from the truth.” He smiled thinly. “Then two things happened, two terrible things. In fact, perhaps a third thing happened, a change on Kamelios, one of those electrical storms that addle the minds for a few days and impose different personalities upon us. I don’t know. Perhaps world and fate conspired to take the steel from my nerves, but whatever happened, the confidence was suddenly ripped away from me. Though I was afraid for myself, I was as afraid for the people I was planning to take into time with me. Suddenly I couldn’t do it.”
“What happened? Or is it too …”
“Is it too what? Too difficult to talk about? Not any more. It was at first, which is why I didn’t. Oh yes, your brother’s death was one of the things. You should know that.”
“But not the main thing …”
“I don’t know. Who can quantify these things? And what good would that do, anyway? Mark’s death happened two days after I’d led an expedition up the valley to a place called Ridge Seventeen. You can’t see it from here; it’s forty miles or so to the east, well away from Steel City. There are Watch Stations there, but that’s all they are, Watch Stations. They monitor the winds, and give us warning of time squalls, electrical upsets. They’re not equipped to send men down to the valley, at least, not on more than preliminary surveys. Something interesting turns up, out goes Section 4 with the scientific groups, then my section, 8, with its three-man, careful-study groups, then the big Sections with the scientists again. All very complex, and often not adhered to. Well, just before your brother got swept away I’d gone down with one of the eight-man teams, a rapid survey group attached to geology, to see some particularly fine structures, and formations, thrown up by a time-eddy—that’s a persistent flow of time through a small area; it has no physical manifestation, beyond the sound, a sort of high-pitched screaming. Time flows fast and furious and all you can really see is sensory impression, and feel the occasional vibration through the ground—you know about that, about the fact that the valley seems physically separate from the land around, although it is apparently connected. We went down into the valley a few hours after it had fallen quiet. Experience teaches us that these rapid-flow time fluxes burn themselves out. I was with the geology group and I saw what looked like a fossil in a stratum of sedimentary rock, and, as you’ve probably been told, fossils are rare. I went up closer and thought I was looking at a crinkled, pitted shell-form. It swam into focus suddenly, the same colour as the rock around it, a sort of smoky grey; it was a rift suit helmet. When you looked hard you could make out the vague shape of a suit lying horizontal as you’d expect. It was very crushed, but clearest of all was the shape of the five-fingered glove, curled up. You can look at that shape and argue for hours as to whether it is a rift suit. All the features are much obliterated, and the face plate lay turned into the cliff from the valley. We were looking at the back of the helmet. It’s still there. No wind has touched it since. No one’s ever gone and dug it out.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why won’t a man go out without his amulet? Why does the loss of a team member result in an elaborate ritual of exorcism for the others? Why does every rifter scrub the dust off his suit before he leaves the vicinity of the valley? Because to do otherwise would be bad medicine. Because on Kamelios we don’t invite Old Lady Wind to supper. Because we respect the dead, and we respect Othertime even more.”
“I understand that,” said Kris, and added, “You don’t wear an amulet, I’ve noticed.”
Ensavlion smiled, just briefly. “I don’t need to, Kris.” He touched his skull, above his eyes; by looking hard Kris could see the thin line of a surgical operation. “I wear my shard inside.”
There was a moment of silence. Kris thought of rifters turning up from other times not as phantoms, but as vague outlines in deep sedimentary strata; crushed and twisted by planetary forces, they outlived, in their new stone form, the flimsy, fleshy shards of life that busied themselves over the monumental trivia and enigma of the alien ages that filled this deep cut in the world.
He thought of Mark.
“And a few days later, to add to the deep concern this fossil human filled you with, you pushed Mark to work the valley and heard that he had perished.”
Ensavlion looked grim and cold as he silently agreed. “That’s about it. When I heard that Mark had been swept away I was upset at first, then angry, then just very, very depressed. I couldn’t spend a night without thinking of him. It took me three weeks to write the letter to your parents—I couldn’t bring myself to use the direct link—and what a terrible, and trite, letter that was. I’d written such letters before. Of course I had, many times before. Section 8 is a spear-head, a dare-devil group; they go everywhere and they die everywhere. I’ve written letters to a thousand worlds, and a thousand homes, and a thousand men and women whom I have never seen, and who, for all I know, never got those personal notes, but found out the details by u-fax. But all of those dead went out on missions that were approved, and sanctioned, and they knew the risks, and they took the risks voluntarily; it hurt when they were lost, but there was a greater stake, and it was easy to be cold.”
“But Mark knew it was wrong to go out, and he made you know without objecting at all. You forced him, and he obeyed. He was a fool.”
“He trusted me. Don’t you understand that, Kris? He trusted me, he obeyed me, because, even though he sensed the risk, the danger, he decided that I was a man to be trusted; he could not find it in himself to doubt that if I was insisting on him going, then I knew something, or I had a different, more rational, more experienced instinct. Your brother went into the valley because I had as good as said that nothing would happen to him; my credentials were experience, my rank. And there was no experience. He died. I wonder if he died thinking of me, wondering if I had done it on purpose, if in some way I had felt contempt for him that I could waste him so. And I didn’t. He was like you, Kris, like you in many ways. And as I feel a bond with you, so I felt a bond with him. Rank meant nothing. We shared an enthusiasm, an awe of this place. A sense of the alien, a gut-wrenching sense of wonder that people usually lose on this world, like Lena and Leo, your colleagues. They’re dead, like steel, polished, sharp, but cold, cold. Not you. You are not sharp yet, and not too polished, but the vibrant energy in you is almost tangible. You came looking for Mark, and you found a world that thrilled you. I could sense it in the sweat smell of you the first time we met. Pungent, aromatic, the most wonderful stink in the world, the stink of excitement. It was the same with Mark. But I pushed that poor bastard, I pushed him because I was half afraid to do my own work. I sent him to the valley whenever I should have gone myself, if anyone was to go at all. Because the valley is our enemy; it is our death; it is to be respected, and there are rare moments when it is totally safe. There are too many moments when it is comprehensively dangerous. I abused his trust, and his awe. I killed him.”
