John Carr - Siege of Tarr-Hostigos

The guard turned to Verkan, saying, "No one's answering and my nose is beginning to turn blue!"

Verkan picked up a loose stone, moved the guard out of the way and banged loudly on the thick plank door.

The door flew open and a horse-faced woman, wearing a velvet and brocade dress, stuck her head out. "Hold onto your britches!"

After a quick double take, Varnath Lala, the Study Team resident metallurgist, held the door open reluctantly. "Oh, it's you!" There was little love between the Dhergabar University Kalvan Study Team and the Paratime Police, whose duty it was to see to their safety while they studied outtime. They were on Kalvan's Time-Line because it was the Paratime rarity: a time-line identified from the exact point of divarication.

Kalvan, formerly Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Trooper, had been accidentally picked up by a Transtemporal conveyer, which sometimes happened when two conveyers temporarily occupied the same space and time, and 'dropped off' on Aryan-Transpacific, Styphon's House Subsector. Most Transtemporal 'hitchhikers' were quickly killed, captured or lost. Few of them re-established their lives in their new environment; Calvin Morrison was one of the few exceptions. He had not only merely survived but also flourished, turning the small princedom of Hostigos into the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos.

The inside of the Foundry appeared the same as any other brass foundry on Kalvan's Time-Line, with huge forges and molds. The astringent scent of molten metal filled the room. Two workers were filing the burrs off a newly cast brass cannon barrel. Another group of founders were removing the mold from around a newly cast sixteen-pound gun. Outside there was a muffled boom from a cannon being proofed.

Despite all the activity in the foundry room, the real heart of the operation was below in the collapsed-nickel shielded basement, where First Level technology, tools and conveyers were kept in hiding to keep Transtemporal Contamination to a minimum. Professor Lala reluctantly took Verkan and Dalla to the back storeroom where the floor had a well-hidden trapdoor that led to the basement.

No matter what happened to the Foundry in the upcoming war between Hos-Hostigos and Styphon's House, no one without access to a nuclear bomb would ever breach the basement and the transtemporal conveyers hidden inside. Paratime travel was the one inviolate secret of Home Time-Line, and anything-including atomic annihilation-would be done to keep it that way.

The stone stairs leading down to the basement were wet and slippery. The collapsed-nickel shielded entryway, a door disguised with steel plates to fool the locals, creaked as it opened in response to Verkan's magnetic key. Inside, there were half a dozen techs, four of them wearing green Paratime Police uniforms. Dalla rushed over to the changing room and shut the door. Dominating the room were two twelve-foot diameter domed silver-mesh transtemporal conveyers.

The room held a desk, some First Level monitoring equipment, a visi-plate that almost completely covered one wall, showing an overhead of Tarr-Harphax from the sky-eye above, several racks of muskets and rifles, half a dozen small barrels of gunpowder, a score of gun carriage wheels and hundreds of kegs of barley and corn.

Dalla was returning to First Level and home; Verkan was on his way to Fourth Level, Seleucid Subsector, so he didn't bother changing. His clothes were those of a prosperous trader and with minor additions would pass muster upon arrival; if not, there would be a change of dress waiting for him. Verkan went over to one of the lockers, opened the door, and removed and put away his sword and scabbard, his powder horn and both pistols, including a little boot gun. Out of one of the drawers he took a Police issue needier and stuck it in his belt.

When Dalla exited the changing room in her Paratime Police greens, he escorted her into the waiting conveyer. Verkan took over the controls and made the proper adjustments. There was a slight lurch, more of a mental- rather than physical-sensation, and after a thirty minute wait they exited into an identical basement on a neighboring Kalvan Control Time-Line ten parayears away, the distance it took a Ghaldron-Hesthor field to build up and collapse. On this time-line no Pennsylvania State Trooper had been dropped off a transtemporal conveyer, which meant there had been no Lord Kalvan to save the small Princedom of Hostigos. Instead the small Princedom had been cruelly conquered, most of the inhabitants slain and the Princedom partitioned off between the neighboring Princedoms of Nostor, Beshta and Sask. This 'Hostigos' was now in ruins and inhabited only by a few peasants, some imported robber barons, turkey thieves and robbers everywhere.

The Foundry barn had once belonged to one of the local gentry, who had died at the Battle of Fyk on Kalvan's Time-Line. Dying without issue, his property reverted to the Throne. The noble on this Control Time-Line had died during the sack of Hostigos Town, and in the aftermath his manor had burned to the ground and the barn abandoned. Occasionally a passing tramp or peasant would spend the night only to hear strange noises and an occasional apparition, courtesy of the Paratime Police. It hadn't taken long for the surviving locals to call the barn haunted. Now it was shunned by all-except the desperate and the ignorant, neither of which were around today according to the local Paratime watch.

As soon as the conveyer had rematerialized inside the basement, the hydraulics of the false floor above began to move, revealing the ceiling of the empty barn. Once the fake floor was recessed, Verkan put the conveyer on anti-grav and let it rise gently until it almost touched the barn's ceiling. Verkan hit the button, which triggered the false floor to move back in place, then eased the conveyer to ground level as soon as the floor was stable. In the early days of transtemporal travel, the conveyer would have materialized within the underlying rock, creating an explosion that would have dwarfed a nuclear bomb. Now conveyers had override switches, but this was faster than waiting for the conveyer to travel a few hundred thousand parayears to First Level and then back again.

Verkan restarted the conveyer and watched flickering glimpses of Fourth Level-airports, buildings, towns, rushing ground cars, water towers and occasionally a raging battle. They were on their way to Fifth Level Paratime Police Terminal, where Dalla would transfer to another conveyer for a journey back to Home Time-Line while Verkan took a rocket to Egypt. Once in Alexandria, he would be briefed, assigned a threat team and provided with a larger conveyer for the journey to Alexandrian-Roman, Seleucid Subsector.

Inside the conveyer, Dalla continued the battle they had fought all morning. "I really wish you would have talked to Kalvan. He's behaving like a jerk-to use an appropriate Fourth Level term that even he would understand."

"Why, Dalla? Because Kalvan won't sugar-coat Rylla's little massacre in Phaxos Town?"

"You know very well Rylla was only doing what was right by her culture's lights. When an underling insults his overlord-at least on Aryan-Transpacific-it must be met with an appropriate response to ensure it's not repeated. If Rylla had been a man, no one would have said a word. Besides, she didn't massacre the entire town, just killed a few dozen of the local nobility. If they'd been peasants, no one would have cared. You've threatened worse atrocities yourself on the Opposition Party and would have carried them out, too, if you could have gotten away with it. I know that smirk, Verkan, and don't tell me you wouldn't have."

"Maybe in a moment of anger. However, I have no intention of putting Kalvan through what I was subject to after our divorce. I must have suffered a year of Tortha's advice and fatherly concern-you do remember, don't you? Well, I promised myself I'd never inflict that punishment on another living being, especially a friend!"