Ben Jeapes - Time's Chariot

Within a minute the taxi was too high for small details to be picked out. By the time it reached the forcefield that officially marked Azania’s upper limits, the shape of the southern end of Africa — a riot of greens, browns and blues set into the darker, royal blue of the sea — had become evident. Above them the sky was dark and the brighter stars were showing. Then the taxi was through the forcefield and had gone hypersonic, and the end of Africa fell away with noticeable speed.

A few minutes later it braked down from transit speed as it arced down through the atmosphere towards Antarctica. Its passengers felt only a slight deceleration pressure. They knew the invisible barriers that the flying sphere was passing through. It was targeted by missiles and plasma bolts and several terawatts-worth of anti-aircraft energy weapons, and every quanta emanating from it was subjected to extreme scrutiny by the College’s defences, for a sign of bogusness. The College took its security seriously.

The dark bones of Fossil Age oil stations passed beneath them and then the College itself came into view, sparkling white like the land around it and perched like a miniature city overlooking the Ross Sea. A city, not an ecopolis; the College had been built in the era of old time cities, before the first ecopolis had been grown. The College was made of old fashioned steel and concrete and plastic, not land coral, and the outlines were straight and regular: the truncated pyramid that was the transference hall and a host of smaller shapes, like a child’s collection of play bricks.

It never seemed quite right to Rico. For the last four hundred years, and for the next twenty-seven, men and women had been able to walk in the same streets and breathe the same air as Shakespeare, Al-Nasir, Einstein, Kennedy, Genghis Khan, the Director, Beethoven, Persaud, Mozart, Galileo, Dabrowski. All those journeys started and ended in this place. Yet where were the streams of taxis bringing time travelling tourists from their ecopoloi to the holiday of a lifetime in Imperial Rome? Where were the bold hunters going on safari among the dinosaurs? Where were the eye witnesses to the Five Bomb War? They were there, but they were either College employees or rich patricians with time on their hands. The people of the Home Time were happy to feed on the correspondents’ reports and to enjoy the vicarious pleasures of Earth’s myriad civilizations, but only in the sanitised safety of the Home Time; only in their cosy, regulated, artificial homes. When it came to real history, the people just weren’t interested.

Two minutes later Rico and Su had arrived; ten minutes later they were no longer in the Home Time.

Some hours earlier, Marje Orendal too woke to a symb signal, an alarm pulsing into her mind.

‘Wha—?’ she mumbled. ‘OK. I’m awake. What is it?’

‘ Dr Orendal .’ A voice she might have recognized. ‘ May I project? ’

‘If you must…’

Marje symbed the lights of her suite to come on, and sat up in bed. The eidolon of a man appeared on the other side of the room, and his eyes widened when he saw her.

‘I’m sorry! I didn’t think…’

‘Where did you imagine I’d be, ten seconds after waking up?’ Marje squinted at him. Awake, and with a face to put to the voice, she recognized him. ‘What is it, Hossein?’

Hossein Asaldra’s face showed a certain hesitation before he spoke. ‘I’ve been asked to ask you to come to the College at once,’ he said.

‘Whatever for?’

‘Something I’d rather tell you face to face, Dr Orendal. May I meet you in the transference hall in twenty minutes?’

‘Are we going somewhere?’ She saw just a brief shadow of irritation cross his face. ‘Yes, certainly,’ she said. ‘Twenty minutes.’

After he had gone, she took a quick shower and field massage, though not too quick to avoid going through her daily ritual of reciting Morbern’s Code. Some things were just too important.

The first tenet:

I will deny to no one to whom the universe has given it the right to existence. I will respect all human life, for even that which only lives in my memory will accuse me.

Jean Morbern and his Creator had had a special relationship. She often wondered what it had been like for him when he realized the godlike responsibilities he had suddenly acquired over millions of people, in creating the Home Time; worse, when he finally accepted he was dying and had to hand over that responsibility to the College he had founded. But he had done well; the Code had lasted 400 hundred years, as had the College that maintained it.

The fac presented her with her clothes and she let them settle and seal themselves around her. She checked her appearance one last time in a mirrored field as she waited for the taxi to arrive. A former lover had called her slight: she preferred slim. Blonde hair in the style she wore for work: prim, no-nonsense. Dark trousers, yellow and red tunic, high collar. She liked to be formal for work — it emphasized that at the end of the day, when she shucked off the College clothes and put on the casual ones, she was then in her own time, accountable only to herself.

A chime told her that the taxi was waiting. She took one last look at the reflection, then cancelled the field and went out to the waiting sphere.

‘Swishville,’ Rico murmured as they stepped into what was technically an apartment. He and Su stood on the edge of a small courtyard with a colonnade running around the edges, and a chuckling little fountain in the middle. Through the arches opposite they could see a vast space of empty air and, beyond that, the stark dark rock and sparkling white snow of a Himalayan mountain, shoulder to shoulder with its neighbours in the range. Rico and Su had to crane their necks to see the cloud- and snow-shrouded tops. Rico peeked behind him and saw a similar mountain towering right over them — the courtyard was carved into it.

This was the Himalayas, 5000 BC. Warmth and air provided by the Home Time and kept in place by an invisible forcebubble around the premises; setting and scenery provided by Nature. Or God. Just one perk of being a patrician of the Home Time, and a lot bigger than the little box Rico lived in.

‘Out of our league,’ Su agreed.

‘Oh, come on. You and Tong will end up somewhere like this in another twenty years.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘May I help you?’ The eidolon of the apartment’s intelligence appeared in front of them, the standard blue outline showing that it was the projection of an artificial personality, not a real human. It was in the form of an old man, bald head, white beard and robe. Rico wondered who it was meant to be.

‘You’re the household?’ he said. ‘Ops Garron and Zo. We made an appointment with you to collect something from Commissioner Daiho.’

‘Of course.’ The eidolon bowed, and turned into a glowing ball that hung in mid-air. ‘Please follow the light.’

The light led them over to the valley side of the courtyard, where a gap in the balustrade led onto a suspended staircase that curved out into the open air, then round and down to the level below them. The apartment was set into the side of a mountain and the drop below was sheer. Rico savoured the view, and when his instincts protested at the amount of solid ground that wasn’t beneath his feet he told himself the apartment would naturally have agravs to catch him if he fell.

Still, it was a relief to step into what was presumably the apartment’s main chamber. A split-level sitting room, one side open to the view and the rest of it carved out of the native rock. There was an unusual number of people there — more than Rico had expected Commissioner Daiho to have around. Being a patrician and a Commissioner of the College would mean a busy life, but this number of staff was unexpected.