Where Time Winds Blow, page 19
Faulcon eased himself down into a chair, clutching his stomach and dabbing at the blood on his lips. Lena suddenly mobilized into action, shedding her kaftan and taking out her grey overalls. “Never mind your aches. You deserved every punch. Much more to worry about is that we’ve just done a stupid thing, letting Kris go like that. He can put you in the disembowelling chamber if he decides to tell what you just told. You may have learned to live with the fact, and kept it quiet, but you are guilty of a crime against the Federation—and I doubt if you told council about it? No, I thought not—right, you’re guilty of criminal abuse of the responsibility assigned to you when you were allowed to the world. We’ve got to talk to Kris, and we’ve got to secure his silence. And don’t forget, the council will have eyes on us, now. So behave calmly. Clean up and let’s get after him.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After searching in lounges, corridors and exit stations for nearly an hour, Faulcon did what he should have done at the outset; he checked with the suiting lounge and learned that Kris Dojaan had suited up and gone out to the valley. Furious with himself, and taking that anger out on the technician in the lounge—“Didn’t you ask for his identity? Didn’t you check that identity and find out that he hasn’t been fully trained yet? Are you stupid or just lazy?”—he climbed into his own suit, waited impaitently for Lena to prepare, and then ran out into the red-tinged afternoon.
The canyon was a mile away and they arrived in less than two minutes, having broken the law on speeding, but not by much. After watching the activity in the area for a minute or so, scanning each rift-suited figure for the clue that would identify Kris, they decided to move along the valley rim to the east, to where the phantom had last been seen. Faulcon was sure that Kris had come back to find the time phantom again, perhaps for reassurance, perhaps to find out how to travel into time himself.
Lena was not so sure; she was worried about Kris’s safety, even though she felt more irritable at this repeat of their earlier pursuit of the boy. As team leader that safety was her responsibility, and she was proving inept at the job. She accepted the fault, but was determined there would be no consequences for her. Kris was going back to Steel City if she had to sling him, rift suit and all, across her shoulder.
They passed two stations, contacting the observers only to learn that they’d seen nothing. They asked about winds, or signs of squalls, or atmospherics: nothing yet; and so they passed on, Lena less worried now, but Faulcon deeply apprehensive of being close to Kris Dojaan inside the volume of the valley itself.
The canyon widened, the valley walls sloping more gently. Wind and rain had scoured strange formations from the rock sections of the valley wall, columnar pinnacles of yellow rock that widened towards the ground and were lost in the heaving strata of some lake-bed sediment, perhaps, that swept about the pinnacles and seemed to be consuming them. Jewels glittered here, small structures, some crushed beneath the rock, some embedded in it.
And something moved.
Lena saw it first, the fleeting movement of a human figure, far down in the canyon, and lost behind the twisting walls of a leaning tower. As she saw the movement, Faulcon spotted the rift suit, standing on a narrow ledge where the canyon walls were less steep than usual; the suit’s arms were extended, and the back hatch was open. Kris had used it to descend almost to the bottom of the valley, and had abandoned it before entering the canyon’s deeps.
“He’s a damned fool,” said Faulcon loudly, and he recognized the anxiety in himself, the worry for Kris, despite the throbbing ache in his jaw and ribcage.
“There! See, Leo? Right down there.”
Faulcon followed the direction of Lena’s raised arm and after a second glimpsed Kris; now he was crouching watching something that neither Faulcon nor Lena could see from on high. A moment later Kris looked around, looked up, the sun flashing on his mask. He must have seen the two stiff, bulky figures above him, because he suddenly rose to his feet and made efforts to conceal himself.
“Let’s go,” said Lena, and she jumped from the ledge, using vertical power to descend the first steep hundred feet, to land on the natural trackway below. Faulcon’s suit obeyed his similar unvoiced instruction. He landed lightly, ran a short way, and then followed Lena over a much greater drop; the ground fell up towards him, the tangle of alien buildings sweeping in an arc towards his slowly turning body; he felt himself guided between quivering girders and jagged projections that tried to snatch at him, and after a moment the suit deposited him jarringly on level ground, and returned main control to him.
There had hardly been time for him to re-orientate himself, and to accept and ignore the irritating pain in his knees, before his head was filled with the siren screeching of danger.
He froze, staring into the distance, to the growing darkness. The sound went through him like a knife, cutting his body into neat pieces, penetrating to his every cell. Whining, throbbing, rising and falling, the voice of panic, preceding the voice of the wind.
“Leo … move it!” Lena’s voice was sharp, angry, He realized she was standing near to him, the rift suit braced ready for action, her face a white blur behind the face plate. “What’s the matter with you?”
Faulcon powered forward, far too fast, forcing himself to slow. The whining siren made his heart race, made the sweat break from him as he moved through the ruins. He couldn’t wrench his eyes from the gloom in the far distance. I’m afraid, he thought. I’m terrified, but I’m still here. I’m not running.
He saw movement to his right and Kris was there, fleeing between the crowded walls and girders, and rugged shards of rock. Faulcon couldn’t follow him exactly, and nor could Lena, and they moved where the suits would allow them, getting deeper into the morass of channelled space between the time-flung ruins.
“Kris!” Lena’s voice was shrill as it came through Faulcon’s headphones. “Stop running, Kris. Give it up. We’ve got to take you back, and you know you’ve got to come back.”
Kris’s sour laughter was unmistakable. Faulcon stopped, looked around him, between walls, panels, girders, rocks … He saw Kris just briefly, the insectoidal mask flashing light as he turned to look at Faulcon.
“Can’t you hear the sirens?” shouted Faulcon.
“Tricks is it, Leo? Trying to trick me out? Why don’t you just leave me be. Go back to your fantasies.”
He slipped away and Faulcon had to retrace his steps until he could move through the junk yard again. With a sudden awful comprehension he realized that Kris did not have the siren-tuner, the special receiver that carried the siren wavelength so that it would not interfere with the ordinary voice communication.
“Lena!” he yelled. “He can’t hear the wind. He’ll never get out of here, we’ll chase him until it hits.”
“Then we chase him until it hits!” she shouted back.
Raw panic surged through Faulcon. He started to shake and the suit behaved badly, not yet ready to take over the survival function, confused by Faulcon’s lack of control. He looked into the distance, saw the darkness rising higher into the pink sky; he could see the moving shapes in that darkness, currents of air rising and falling, sweeping about as if the very clouds lived and writhed as they crossed the centuries.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he screamed, and the suit began to run, struck a wall, bounced back.
“Calm! Leo, calm,” came Lena’s voice. “If you throw a fit you’re dead for sure.”
Kris’s baiting laughter; his voice: “Calm, Leo, keep calm. Don’t be scared, poor little Leo. Just get out of the valley and go and stand and watch and see people die, just like you saw my brother get swept away …”
“Shut up, Kris.” Lena, anxious, the edge of panic in her own voice.
Relentlessly: “Poor Leo, so shit-scared his rift suit is all fouling up. But don’t worry about me, Leo. I’m all right. You can watch me without helping me any time because I don’t want your fucking help. Go and stand and tremble and remember how it was when Mark called out for help, and you were too scared to lift a hand, too shit-scared to find out if you were really a man, so you just stood there while my brother called for help when his suit failed him, and got swept away. A brave man, Leo, and a man with all the instincts for survival. Just think about that, think about how it is to trust someone, to make the mistake, the noble mistake, of putting your faith in someone who isn’t worth a damn. Just think of it, and think of all that fear-crap deep down in your belly, and think about all those times you go running at night, and stop and scream your fear when you look down and remember how fucking shitless you were that day. Oh yes, Leo, I know it was you that I saw running that night, running and screaming and vomiting your fear. It wasn’t Ensavlion, like you tried to make me think. It was you! How many nights, Leo? How many hours screaming, how many buckets of tears?”
Faulcon moved towards the movement he could see. Kris’s voice was a grating whine; it had jarred and stung, and then it had angered and hurt, and then it had become just the voice of a man in deadly danger, a man who was clinging to a dream, who needed help just like his brother had needed help, and maybe more so … There was nothing wrong with Kris Dojaan, except that he didn’t know what was about to happen to him.
Faulcon moved after him, now, and the pathways between the crowded ruins widened; abruptly he was out into the open, running down a slope, and into an area of area of high, misplaced rocks and crumbling brick and stone walls. He glimpsed Lena some way away, but moving in the same direction. The siren wailed, and he forced himself not to look into the distance; already his suit was beginning to sing its wind-song, the rattling whining of surface sensors reacting to the physical wind that was building up outside.
“Why don’t you just leave me to myself!” cried Kris, and Faulcon imagined that he was addressing Lena; there was anxiety there, not hostility.
“Can’t you see that darkness?” came Lena’s voice. “Wise up, Kris. Your life is in danger.”
“I want to go. Just leave me … I’m going after Mark …”
“The hell you are.”
Faulcon listened to the interchange and felt terribly cold. Now he could hear the booming of the wind, the deep thunder of atmosphere being wrenched and twisted against the fabric of stable time. His head spun, his mind became nothing but dizziness and determination; he seemed to run in a dream, his legs hardly moving. Even if he’d wanted to he felt he could not move fast enough, now, to escape that wind.
He saw Kris run out of sight behind a sphere of translucent green material; he could see the boy through the structure, standing there, breathing hard as he tried to think where he should run to now.
Faulcon moved after him, and quite abruptly he came face to face with the time phantom, the ragged, wretched figure, now standing beside him, staring at him. He stopped and stared into that wizened face, saw beyond the mask of age and into the very soul of this timelost. In the instant of indisputable recognition he felt a sobering shock.
His stomach heaved; sour bile rose into his mouth, flooded down his chin. His stomach clenched, stopped the vomiting, hurting as the muscles contracted and tugged and shrank, pulling his body down against the resistance of the rift suit. He was a man shocked to immobility, and the suit took over.
The time winds boomed again through his headphones, louder now, seeming to approach far faster than was usual; the siren was a persistent and frantic reminder that somewhere in the valley, men and women were scattering like frantic herds, that Steel City was swinging its observer stations round to watch, that photographs were being taken, that cars and trucks and shuttles were shifting into positions to get as much from the winds as they could, that teams were being called up, suited-up, instructed ready for the swift mission following in the wake of the time winds; and above their heads, in the deeps of space, satellite crews were swinging out of hammocks, crawling down to their cameras and view-stations and monitoring consoles.
And somewhere nearby, perhaps, Operation Catchwind was moving into place, waiting for the word from Ensavlion, the word to go.
All this was happening, and Faulcon stood and stared at the time phantom, remembering Leuwentok’s words, but unable to make any sense of what he remembered, conscious only of that face; he felt his body moved finally by the gentle suit, moved away, moved almost out of eye-shot, just sufficient vision remaining so that he could see how the phantom appeared to fade away, to become insubstantial, ghostly.
He took control of the suit, conscious that the machine, itself aware of his shock and growing hysteria, had not relinquished full control to him. He moved out of the clustered rocks back into the open spaces, and Kris darted from hiding, and stopped, staring at him. There was something about the boy, something about his bearing, his posture … he was exhausted, his chest rising and falling heavily, his skin, the naked skin of his hands and cheeks, glistening with sweat; his mask was dirty, his vision impaired by dust. Lena appeared close by and began to run towards him. He heard her and started to move again; whatever he had been thinking as he had stood, staring at Faulcon, Faulcon would never know. Kris Dojaan took two steps away from Lena when he noticed something beyond Faulcon and stopped again, this time turning fully round, then backing away, his body cringing, his face creasing with a sudden, shocking fear; he ripped the mask from his face so that he could see better, and his voice was almost hysterical as he screeched his panic, choking as the words came, “Oh God! What’s that … Oh my God!”
“Get him, Leo!” shouted Lena, and moved in on Kris. “Come on, Leo, come on, for God’s sake. My suit won’t let me hang around much longer. Leo!”
Faulcon had turned. He could not hear her. He was listening to the screaming gale, the frightful booming and wailing, the thunder of the physical wind that came with the silent wind of time.
And he was watching; above the valley hung a great black cloud, rolling and breaking and flowing towards him, a hideous rolling caricature of the most fearsome night imaginable. Below it the valley was changing faster, more confusingly than the eye could follow—the land and the structures upon the land rippled and distorted, twisted and vanished as they were swept into some unimaginable future, Faulcon watched as white towers winked out of existence, to be replaced by moving spiral shapes that radiated redly as they turned. He watched as an immense spider’s web of girders was torn from vision, flickering a moment as a time squall knocked it into Othertime and back, and then it was gone and a hideous shape stood there, the carved, gargoyle-decorated gateway of a primitive era. Then that too had been swept away and its place taken by bulging domes, then decayed concrete block-houses, then a vast tree-like plant, its branches laden with green and juicy fruit.
Everywhere in the valley the shapes were changing, the valley walls themselves shifting in colour and texture and dust rising from the incredible conflict of time and matter that was occurring.
And this terrifying storm of change was gaining on Faulcon, overreaching him, perhaps the most powerful wind that had ever been witnessed on Kamelios …
Faulcon’s rift suit took command; perhaps it had comprehended the danger, both from the wind and from Faulcon’s frozen fear stance. It turned him round and began to run him away … faster and faster, until his legs were jerked into the rapid run position and he was carried forward at an almost bone-breaking speed. In a matter of instants he had passed Lena and the petrified Kris Dojaan. If Faulcon heard her voice, “Leo, stop and help … help me carry him … he could do nothing about it.
But after a moment as the terrain fled past, as the suit whined and groaned its effort, Faulcon snapped out of his shock and twisted about. He saw Lena running after him, the limp form of Kris Dojaan cradled in her arms, the towering dark, the flickering wavefront of change, close behind her. She was still screaming at him, still calling to him. But his suit would not stop; his suit had only one thing in its mechanical mind: the survival of its occupant. It was running him to safety, to the safety of the sheer wall up whose length it could leap in four or five jet-powered bounds. He was a passenger in that man-shaped survival machine, running forwards, looking backwards, watching appalled as Lena’s suit, not prepared to live with the encumbrance of its passenger any longer, let Kris drop to the ground. Faulcon’s ears blanked Lena’s horrified scream from his mind; one glimpse, one imagined view of the disgust and helplessness she must have felt, was enough. Kris sprawled on the ground, then scrabbled to his feet. He looked about him, anywhere, everywhere but at that sheer wall of dark that was reaching above him. He began to run, and as if it might somehow protect him from the wind he had so quickly come to fear, he flung himself into the lee of a cubical grey building in whose translucent walls automatic shapes moved as they had moved a million years distant.
An instant later the wave front of distortion swept across him; the cube vanished, to be replaced by a towering crag of rock, Kris flashing into Othertime and a spinning, gleaming, indefinable shape appearing in his place, the dust of the ground a different hue, and where he had cowered, sensing death so close, just the swirling of dust, and age, and time …
Lena’s yelling changed to the genuine screaming of her fear. Faulcon joined her, the flood of panic dissipating in a few welcome shrieks of terror. The wind boomed, the suits moaned as the wind tickled their sensors, Lena gained on Faulcon, and the edge of the canyon, the safety point, seemed to get no closer to either of them. Faulcon could see dark shapes scattering up the canyon walls in the very distance, suits mostly, but a few two-man craft rising vertically, and earning their price for their drivers. He could see the sparkle of light on steel, and knew that the monitoring cameras were in place all along the ridge. And as he looked into the distance, so it appeared before him in the winking of an eye, the pyramid, the time machine of the enigmatic creatures that Ensavlion believed policed this world out of sight of those who watched. Faulcon’s suit veered to the right and he was powered past the faintly vibrating golden structure in a few instants. But as he passed so he turned to watch as a figure seemed to rise from the ground before the machine, a wrinkled caricature of a human shape, rising to its feet from a crouched position, a figure he recognized, having seen it only minutes before.
