Time's Chariot

mind-to-mind communication. Those clothes you wear. Your amazing state of health. And anything else our surveillance hasn’t picked up yet.’

‘I’m not sure there’s so much we can tell you,’ said Scott.

‘Of course not!’ Carradine pointed up at one of the ceiling lights. ‘Any more than I could describe how the power grid works. I have a pretty good idea, but actually communicating it to a savage so that the savage can make it work… no, I’m just a layman. As are you and Mr Daiho.’ He took a swig of coffee. ‘Your journeymen, on the other hand, must be wonderfully well-informed.’

‘They work for me!’ Scott sounded outraged.

‘Back in the Home Time,’ Carradine said calmly. He grinned. ‘Where I expect they’re the lowest of the low. Here, I can give them a level of luxury and freedom they’ve never known in their lives. They’re young and they’re only human. I think I can get through to them.’

Until now he had only been looking at Daiho and Scott when he spoke. Now he looked pointedly at the third Home Timer present. ‘And then there’s you, Mr Asaldra. You’re obviously a trained agent of your organization. You travel through time routinely. You must know a few useful things, and from those few useful things, who knows what might spin off?’

The sudden change of subject caught Asaldra by surprise and his mouth worked a couple of times before he answered.

‘Yes, I was a Field — an, um, trained agent, but that was a long time ago,’ he said.

‘And I was a Boy Scout a long time ago but I can still remember my knots,’ said Carradine.

Asaldra laughed, disbelieving, almost desperate.

‘I’m not telling you anything, Mr Carradine, so please get used to it.’

‘Whatever.’ Carradine nodded to one of the guards at the back of the room. There was the buzz of a stunner and Asaldra crumpled in a heap on the floor.

Daiho and Scott just watched, not daring to move, as two of the guards lifted their stunned colleague up and carried him from the room.

Carradine calmly watched them go, then stood up. ‘And that just leaves you two,’ he said as he turned to leave. ‘A philosopher, and management.

I don’t have any vacancies for philosophers and in this century we have managers coming out of our ears. However, one of my staff did tell me she’d welcome the opportunity to do a post mortem of a Home Timer, should the opportunity arise. I’ll leave you to think up ways of convincing me you’re more valuable than just dead meat.’

‘Come in, come in.’ The barbarian who spoke their language smiled with an almost convincing display of friendliness as Sarai and Jontan were nudged at gunpoint back into the lounge. The chief barbarian was there: he snapped at someone behind them and Jontan felt the nozzle of the gun — they said they were just stunners — removed from the small of his back. ‘Let’s have some introductions,’ said the interpreter. ‘This is Mr Carradine, we all work for him. You can call me Alan. I already know that you are Sarai and Jontan.’

They just looked back at him. He shrugged and turned to the Carradine man. More gabbling. The worst of it was, so much of what these savages said to each other sounded almost familiar. The words bounced and skimmed off the top of Jontan’s understanding.

One of the guards came forward and approached the kit, which still sat in one corner of the room, completely untouched. Jontan bit back a smile. He knew what was coming and it would be fun to watch.

Sarai was smiling too. She reached out and took his hand.

A zap and a bang, and the guard was thrown back across the room. Carradine was grinning too, and several of the guards were unnaturally pokerfaced as their colleague picked himself up off the floor. Watching and enjoying someone else’s misfortune was a brief moment of shared humanity between civilized Home Timers and bygoner primitives.

‘I want you to turn off the forcefield,’ Alan said.

‘We can’t,’ Sarai said. A brief exchange between the two bygoners.

‘Can’t or won’t?’ said Alan.

‘We’re not allowed to,’ Jontan said. ‘Mr Scott—’

‘You don’t work for Mr Scott any more,’ Alan said patiently. He gestured at the man standing next to him. ‘You work for Mr Carradine.’

Jontan and Sarai were shocked. ‘Mr Scott is from the Holmberg-Chabani-Scott combine,’ Jontan said.

‘I doubt that will mean anything to him, Jon,’ Sarai said with forced patience. The point had occurred to Jontan as the words left his mouth, but it seemed so right. If only this Carradine person knew what it meant, there would be no more of this ‘you work for me’ nonsense.

‘Does he?’ Alan pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Well, well. The Holmberg-Chabani-Scott combine. We’ll all certainly have to tread carefully with them, if we live long enough for them to be around, which I doubt.’ He nodded at one of the guards behind them.

Jontan yelled as a strong hand grabbed his wrist, and the yell turned to a howl as his arm was pulled behind his back to make his wrist touch his shoulder. And then a powerful shove sent him flying forward towards the kit, and he just had time to symb a turn-off command at the forcefield before he thumped into the culture tank. He lay across it for a moment and drew a couple of deep breaths, before he slowly stood up, rubbing his arm.

Carradine was chuckling and even Sarai, he was mortified to see, looked as if she might have been amused.

‘You see? You can,’ said Alan. ‘And if that forcefield goes up again, we’ll simply repeat the process.’

Carradine strolled over to stand next to Jontan, hands in his pockets, surveying the kit. He said something that was obviously a question.

‘Matthew, that is, Mr Carradine wonders which of these bits and bobs controls it, anyway?’

Carradine was standing right next to the control module but Jontan had no intention of telling him that.

‘Well, never mind,’ Alan said. ‘Our people will do a preliminary examination of this lot and in the meantime I want you two to relax a bit, spend some time together, think things over. You see, your Home Time doesn’t know you’re here. This is Mr Carradine’s offer. We want to learn from you. You won’t be journeymen any longer, you’ll be world experts and we’ll hang onto your every word. In return, you’ll have every want supplied and you can be as close together as you want. Do what we ask and you’ll be free. Do think about it.’

He paused for a moment.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘free-ish.’

Night fell. The engineering team still pored over the equipment from the Home Time. Some of Carradine’s team wanted to drag the journeymen out and interrogate them on the spot. Carradine reasoned that two relaxed, well-fed journeymen with a good night’s sleep behind them would be more useful than two physical and mental wrecks, and he vetoed the idea.

Despite his promises of their being free together, he kept the two apart for the time being, each with a guard on their door. Promises could always be kept later. Neither slept much anyway.

The entire end of the room where Asaldra had appeared — and the others, three weeks beforehand — was cordoned off. Motion detectors were set up, cued to powerful stunners. If any other Home Timers appeared there, they would be detected and shot down in a moment.

Guards patrolled. Motion sensors cast their electronic net over the entire area. Helicopters with infra-red cameras patrolled the skies. The detectors and stunners set up around the arrival point in the lounge were checked and double checked, and an armed guard was stationed there too.

Rico Garron arrived in the twenty-first century.

SEVENTEEN

‘Marje? Do you have a moment?’

Marje looked up in surprise to see Yul Ario, Commissioner for Fieldwork, standing in the entrance to her office with a friendly smile on his face. Not a projected eidolon but the real thing.

‘Yul? What can I do for you?’