Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

Briefly, they were there to keep everyone happy, from me down to the lowest officer in the army; and also to keep us out of Paula’s way and off her mind, except when she had a need for us. A good share of this, I picked up from my own observation; but it was General Pierre de Coucy Aruba who dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s for me.

The general was a drinker. That is, he could not yet be called a drunk because he held his alcohol without visible sign and never seemed to prolong his drinking beyond three or four drinks. But those drinks came at every lunch, dinner, cocktail hour and late supper at which I ever saw him.

“You could call me a philosopher,” he told me one evening in his tent, after a post-dinner planning session with his staff had concluded. His officers were gone and he had invited me in for a private chat with just the two of us.

“You might think that I could probably set up with my own army and carve out a nice little empire for myself,” he went on. “And I could—I could. But I’m not the kind who wants an empire for himself. ‘Everybody’s a little mad except thee and me, and I even have my doubts about thee!’ People intrigue me. I like to be comfortable and watch them. So I’m the perfect commander for our Empress. She knows she never needs to worry about a military coup as long as I’m in control.”

“I can see she’d appreciate that,” I said.

“Yes, indeed.” He smiled at me—and it was a smile, not a grin, with the sun-wrinkles deepening at the corners of his eyes and the tidy, little grey mustache quirking upwards at the corners. “Wouldn’t you, in her shoes?”

“I gather she makes a good boss?” I said.

“A good Empress, you mean.” He waggled a forefinger at me. “Always remember that. An Empress has to be an Empress, at all times. That’s why the young ladies.”

“The young ladies?”

“Of course. Familiarity breeds contempt.” He smiled again. “And there’s no familiarity like that in bed, eh?”

“That’s true enough,” I said soberly, thinking of my own two women.

“Most queens had trouble out of getting laid,” he said. “Most empresses, too. Queen Elizabeth... Catherine of Russia... notice none of the girls around here, though, are quite as good-looking as the Empress?”

“I had,” I told him.

“Obviously. The art of controlling a man with your female presence is to be just out of reach, but out of reach. You understand?”

I did. Not only did I understand, but a certain near-demonic impulse moved in me, and my trader’s instinct was challenged. During the days when Paula had been talking to me about coming with her on her road of conquest, she had sent up clear signals that she was attracted to me personally. I had taken for granted, that part, if not all of this was calculated, to gain her own ends. But, as it turned out, she had wanted me neither for my services as a magician nor myself; she had simply bought herself a show piece at the cost of nothing more than promises, rather than having to spend her troops and materiel to get it. Again, it had been a case of “seller beware”; so I really had no kick coming if I had taken counterfeit currency for what I had sold. But for her to assume that, after having been sharped, I would cheerfully reconcile myself, given the equivalent of two cents on the dollar, was something of an insult.

Accordingly, I played the game with the female staff, so as not to arouse any suspicions; but privately, I set my sights on Paula after all. I was patient. I had my ability to see patterns working for me. Success would be along, down the line there, somewhere.

Meanwhile, in the patterns, I had found another hobby to occupy my time. Now I had broken through twice to the oneness of the universe, and there was no longer any doubt in my mind that such a state of mind existed; and if that was so, anything was possible, even the destruction of the time storm. I made it an invisible exercise to look around me for patterns constantly, and to develop my perception of them to the point where that perception and recognition and understanding of the patterns would be simultaneous.

The work paid off. The patterns were there, all about me all the time. They were there in the interactions of people, in their physical movements, their speech, their reactions, and their thinking; and in all else about fauna, flora, earth, and sky. Little by little, my knowledge of such patterns became deeper and surer, until it began to approach eerily close to the true magic of telepathy and second sight. I could have played chess now, better than anyone I had ever encountered; but the chess patterns, for all that they were fascinating and innumerable, were dead patterns. I preferred the live patterns created by my fellow men and women.

So I observed and learned; and, curiously, I could feel the Old Man learning through me.

Meanwhile, we were marching to the Atlantic seaboard. The points we searched out were sometimes the fragments of cities or towns that still held supplies or needed equipment; or sometimes they were population centers like my own community, which had not existed before the time storm forces had been balanced, but which had sprung up since around some acquired communication equipment or military force.

In every case, however, these places and the people in them were plainly inferior to the armed strength of the Empress. They sometimes bluffed for a day or two before yielding, but in the end they all acknowledged her as their overlady. Then, at last, we ran into opposition.

We had reached the ocean and a place that called itself Capitol, which once had been half Washington International Airport, and was now half that and half something else, because deep-water ocean lapped up against the base of cliffs that abruptly cut off the main road into the airport. On the ocean, moored out a little distance from a jerry-built wharf, were a number of small oceangoing craft. Still hangared about the airport were a number of 1980 commercial passenger jets and—on the land area of that part that now opened to the ocean—some light, five-passenger craft, that were like flying bubbles with stubby wings, and a tiny power plant that seemed permanently fueled with an inexhaustible, built-in supply of energy.

These were from some time later than the twentieth century; and these also were the real prize from Paula’s point of view. The craft, in their own right, were almost as famous as I was in mine. For, although there were still large cruise ships and other massive watercraft to be found up and down the Atlantic coast, there was no way now to either maintain or operate them. It was still possible to cross the Atlantic in boats up to the size of small yachts. But the trip would be uncomfortable and a matter of some weeks. With these light aircraft out of the post-twentieth century, the ocean could be crossed in hours.

Once more, Paula moved in, going gutsily herself with a small guard to negotiate, while readying her armed forces and artillery behind her. But this time, the target did not yield; and she was forced to fight for what she wanted.

Not only that, but these people fought hard. It took nearly a week for Aruba and his soldiers to take the place and subdue its inhabitants; and it cost them over half of their strength in casualties. Replacements would have to be marched across the continent from the west coast, since she could not trust any of the recently subjugated communities in between to furnish her with loyal fighters. That meant months. Fall and winter would be upon us before they were here and trained. Paula herself, and her inner staff officers, could cross the ocean by air at any time; but the small boats available could not ferry her army across the Atlantic in bad weather. We were stuck where we were until spring.