Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

Paula had already had to face one particular ugly truth; that there was a point beyond which her well-trained soldiers would not obey her. From dressed-up recruits they had turned into veterans in the bloodbath of the last seven days; and commanders back to the dawn of history could have told her what would happen when such soldiers were finally allowed to overrun an enemy who had bled them heavily in preceding days. Her kids had turned into killers. They slaughtered right and left on that Monday afternoon as they subjugated the conquered people.

It was Paula’s first setback. There were aircraft mechanics and boat mechanics, as well as other experts, among her former enemies that were worth regiments to her; but there was no way she could hold her blood-high soldiery back long enough to weed out such valuable individuals from the otherwise killable chaff of the local population. Monday cost her dearly.

Nonetheless, she had to put a good face on it and appear to encourage the wild celebration that ensued that night. It began at late afternoon and went on until dawn, by which time all but a few rarely tough individuals had collapsed. It was at dawn that Aruba came for me.

That he came himself for me, rather than sent for me, was an index of his upset. He stepped into my tent, peered for a second at the still form of Doc, who appeared to be asleep on one of the couches, and then looked back at me. In the early daylight coming through the plastic windows of the tent, his face was sallow, the shade of new liverwurst.

“She wants to see you,” he said.

“Paula?” I asked.

He nodded. I got to my feet. I was still dressed. Anything could have happened in that night just past and I had not felt like trying to sleep.

“What about?” I asked, as I went with him out into the cool morning. A breeze was blowing from the ocean.

“She’ll want to tell you herself,” he said and licked his lips. He had been badly shaken and I could see him reaching for a bottle the minute he was alone in his own quarters.

I nodded indifferently enough, but inwardly I braced myself. On this morning, her purpose in wanting to see me would not be good. I walked alongside Aruba to the entrance of the pavilion tent, where two of her officers—colonels—now stood with machine rifles, doing sentry duty. He stopped at the tent flap.

“Go in,” he said, “she’s waiting for you.”

I went in alone. Paula was alone also, wearing a filmy yellow dressing gown as if she had just risen from bed; but her face was hard and weary with the look that comes from being up and tensely awake for hours.

“Marc,” she said, and her voice was pure industrial diamond in tone, “there’s a paper over there on the desk. Sign it.”

“Sign...?” I went across to the desk and looked down. It was a neatly typed letter, several pages long, beneath the letterhead she had given me as one of her staff.

“Just sign it,” she said.

“Not until I read it,” I answered.

Our eyes clashed. Then she shrugged and turned away; but I could almost see the note her memory made of this, my balking at her command. It would be recalled when the hour was right.

“Of course,” she said.

I bent my head to the letter again and read. It was like being unexpectedly hit in the stomach. Or, more accurately, it was like a sickening collision in the dark, running full tilt into a concrete wall you had known was there all the time, but whose existence you had put out of mind—an impact so unexpected and brutal it left you nauseated; because suddenly I understood Paula, saw her complete and naked in the glaring, fluorescent light of what she was planning to set me up for.

I read that I had been shocked by the irresponsible behavior of some of her soldiers in taking over the enemy area. But, over and above my shock, I had been aghast to see the criminal murder of certain innocent individuals among the defenders; artisans and mechanics, as well as other trained personnel, who had only been in the enemy camp under duress. The slaughter of these innocents was not only a heinous crime against them as individuals, but amounted to treason against the Empire, since the Empress was now deprived of the willing services of these people and many of her subjects would suffer because of that lack. Consequently, I called upon her formally to take action against the criminals responsible and see that they were brought to justice, since I, with the skills that had allowed me to halt the ravages of the time storm, could see more deeply and clearly than anyone into the terrible cost we must all bear because of the deaths of these innocents.

Suddenly, reading this, the pattern I had been building on Paula was complete. I saw the hell she had in mind not only for the soldiers responsible for delaying her here over the coming winter, but for anyone who had been around to witness this happening to her; and that told me more about her than she might have betrayed to me in two more years of my observing her.

I signed.

“I’m proud to do this,” I said, taking the letter over to her. “It doesn’t say anything I didn’t feel myself. No wonder you’re the Empress, Paula. You can even read minds.”

She smiled and took the letter. I was by no means forgiven for wanting to read before signing, but for the present small moment, the smile was genuine. I would never have risked flattering her so grossly before I had stepped through the flap of this tent; but now I knew when and where she was vulnerable.

“Dear Marc,” she said. “You understand.”

She looked at me; and I understood, all right. Ironically, suddenly the moment I had patiently waited for, in which I could gain control over her by securing her physically, was with me. In this devastated moment she was available, if I had still wanted her. But the fact was, after reading that letter, I now would not have touched her with a shark-stick.

“More than ever before,” I said. “Do you want me to let other people know I’ve written you this letter?”

She hesitated, but it was only the habit of caution operating in her. Again, if she had been herself, I myself would have hesitated to show her such rapid agreement. But she was not herself. That was the crucial truth that had broken out into the open, with the completing of her pattern in my mind just now. She had a flaw I had never really appreciated until now, a deep flaw that would cost her the rulership of the world that had seemed so possible up until now. Already, she was adapting to my own hint that I was eager to accept the authorship of the letter she held. Already she was beginning to make herself believe the attractive idea that I had indeed written it on my own initiative.

“If I just drop the letter with you and go out to spread the word, I know your officers’ll be eager to back me up. I know they will,” I said. “Then we can arrest the guilty ones and bring them to justice before they have time to fill the minds of their fellow soldiers with lies.”

“Yes.” She laid the letter softly down on the end-table beside her. “Of course. You’ve got my permission to tell what you’ve written me. Justice should be speedy.”

“I’ll go right now, then,” I said. “Wait a second, though. Maybe if you give me a written order to do what’s necessary, I can make sure none of them escape. Or, for that matter, with that kind of authority I could do anything necessary in connection with the matter....”

She smiled dazzlingly, seeing me setting the noose of responsibility for this so firmly around my own neck.

“Of course,” she said.

She crossed to the desk, wrote on the top sheet of an order pad sandwich, tore off the top sheet and pushed the carbon copy to the back of the desk.

“There you are.”

“Thank you.” I took it without looking at it and moved toward the door. “Probably I shouldn’t waste time....”